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Instagram Encrypted Messaging Ends on Friday, May 8

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Re: Instagram Encrypted Messaging Ends on Friday, May 8

#41
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it won't. All the "news" about that at the end of last year was 100% nonsense, started by tech "influencers" who cited nothing and showed nothing. https://lifehacker.com/tech/meta-is-not-scraping-dms-to-trai...

what has meta ever done that would instill trust in you? From the very article you cited: > The best thing you can do to preserve your privacy and security with your Meta messages is to use end-to-end encryption (E2EE) whenever possible. WhatsApp has E2EE built-in, and Meta has automatically started rolling it out for Messenger, but you might need to manually start an E2EE chat for existing conversations in the app.…

I didn't say that I trust Meta. My point was that saying they're doing it so they can read your messages just means that the people commenting don't know how E2EE works, or how it is still not a 100% secure way of communicating, just a more secure way of communicating. Once one of those ends is compromised, it's game over.

I really don't understand what the point of the quote you're citing? Or how it goes against what I was saying?

The best thing you can do would be to use E2EE. That would be the most secure thing. It won't, however, prevent the makers of your E2EE product from reading the messages once they're unencrypted, regardless of who makes it.

Re: Instagram Encrypted Messaging Ends on Friday, May 8

#42
post #31

I do not think any person would freely choose unencrypted messaging. There is no reason for unencrypted messaging. This is a fundamental market failure. It is only through bundling these messaging services with other services + platform dominance that unencrypted messaging still lives.

This is not correct. People are happy to give up privacy in exchange for the convenience of being able to restore message history remotely, even if they lose their key.

Re: Instagram Encrypted Messaging Ends on Friday, May 8

#43
post #31

I do not think any person would freely choose unencrypted messaging. There is no reason for unencrypted messaging. This is a fundamental market failure. It is only through bundling these messaging services with other services + platform dominance that unencrypted messaging still lives.

I have so many problems with using Matrix with multiple devices and most of them are caused by its encryption. If there was a magic wand that would add encryption to a system without changing anything else there would be no reason not to use it, but the reality is that E2EE does place limits on the overall functionality of the system.

This is why Telegram and Discord are so popular. They are popular because they work well, and part of the reason they work well is not bothering with E2EE. For instance, when you join a group chat, the server can just send you the message history (if enabled) and there's no need to negotiate keys with every other participant. There no "joining...", there is no "message will appear shortly...", you just press the button and you're in.

I've never seen an E2EE group chat that could remain stable with more than a few hundred participants. Even Matrix gives up and just makes it unencrypted at that point.

Re: Instagram Encrypted Messaging Ends on Friday, May 8

#44
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GPG-encrypted email.

GPG doesn't support forward secrecy, which is table stakes for encrypted messaging these days. And that's to say nothing about the slightly suboptimal usabilty...

True, but you're not trusting any corporation to do what they say they are doing, or not changing it out from under you. I guess you're trusting the Gnu people though.

Re: Instagram Encrypted Messaging Ends on Friday, May 8

#45
post #8

"In March, a spokesperson for Meta told The Guardian that the decision to abandon encryption was due to low uptake. "Very few people were opting in to end-to-end encrypted messaging in DMs, so we're removing this option from Instagram in the coming months," the spokesperson said." I wonder what it's like being a spokesperson for a company (or administration) where everyone including yourself knows your statements are…

[deleted]

Re: Instagram Encrypted Messaging Ends on Friday, May 8

#46
post #8

"In March, a spokesperson for Meta told The Guardian that the decision to abandon encryption was due to low uptake. "Very few people were opting in to end-to-end encrypted messaging in DMs, so we're removing this option from Instagram in the coming months," the spokesperson said." I wonder what it's like being a spokesperson for a company (or administration) where everyone including yourself knows your statements are…

They also made it difficult to opt-in and, from what I remember, no option for group chats.

Re: Instagram Encrypted Messaging Ends on Friday, May 8

#47

What’s the endgame here? - just better ad targeting? (lol if so) - policing accounts for various possible infractions? - training data for ML models?

I would definitely guess its for AI model data. Must be a huge trove of info other companies cant train on

Re: Instagram Encrypted Messaging Ends on Friday, May 8

#48
post #28
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume Meta has backdoor access.

Then why end the feature? Would it not be better to maintain the facade and continue to benefit from it?

If they formally sunset the feature, there’s less of a case for someone to sue.

One can’t say they didn’t know or consent to their group chat info being used for training data if there’s no reason to assume your chat data is private

Re: Instagram Encrypted Messaging Ends on Friday, May 8

#49

It feels absurd to have seen E2EE fought for and considered table stakes by many users, especially the technically-oriented, now rolled back a short time later by these companies who never really cared about privacy to begin with and clearly don't expect any backlash. It also feels like the wide-scale desperate adoption of AI has weakened claims about the essential nature of privacy, now that everyone has demonstrate…

And now you have people like New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez trying to ban Meta and other platforms from using encryption in the first place.
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