MartinIt takes engineering hours to remove a feature. Even if few people use it, why go out of your way to remove it? Meta’s hurting its users. And for what? https://www.theverge.com/tech/894752/instagram-end-to-end-encryption
Grant Joseph@mshelton It takes even more engineering hours to support a feature to keep it from decaying with time. I think E2EE should absolutely remain, but removing it could make sense for purely practical reasons.
hackbyte #antifa #friendica 13HB1@GrantJoseph @mshelton Sorry WHAT!??
@hackbyte @mshelton When you keep a feature, you need to support it. Browsers, operating systems, and dependency libraries change with time. This will introduce a maintenance burden to keep the feature working. Instragram itself will also change around the encrypted DMS. It's not like everything is standing still, and all of that is a maintenance burden. And when things break, people file support tickets. Hell, people file support tickets regardless, that someone has to handle.
@GrantJoseph @mshelton Yeah mate .. i know _very_ well about technological debt.... I wrote plain html websites in the 90ies, by hand, because neither frames/iframes nor any sort of CMS existed way back then.
And you want to tell me, getting rid of encryption is good or even just okay, because of technical debt?
Are you sure you have taken your medications? Maybe a bit less of the kool aid?
@hackbyte I took all my meds today. Didn't miss a bottle. I think I made it pretty clear I don't think removing encryption is okay. But I do understand the business case for a company that cares far more about business than privacy or human rights. I honestly don't think this is that big of a deal because no one should expect real privacy from fucking Instagram. It should never have been considered more than a gimmick by anyone who understands secure messaging. We have Signal for that.
@GrantJoseph I see .. hats off ;) .. (having taking my medications regularily too) ...
Still .... i don't think that there is _any_ real rectification for removing encryption features whatsoever anywhere..
We still need to make ppl aware about encryption and better alternatives... but just saying "we have signal for that" doesn't do the trick imho.
IMHO, where there is already at least some level of encryption included, there should always be at least the same level of encryption.
Where there is no encryption as of yet, there should be meaningful encryption implemented asap.
The good old "https everywhere" days had a reason .... now, hat virtually everything _is_ https, i don't think we should stop.
So ..... sorry .. nope .... i think it is bad, in every case .. not just if you're messaging using the wrong cell carrier... ;)