CIRCLE WITH A DOT

@uint8_t

i suspect the problems with matrix as opposed to signal(signal group chats do work, subject to their scaling factors) is a fair few factors

• wasn't designed as an encrypted tool by default, so features aren't gated on "how does this work in an encrypted room?"

• linear, consistent history. you will always see every message(assuming the signal servers aren't fucking with you) in a consistent order, there's no disagreement over message ordering, or discovering messages that are backdated.

• there is one client implementation and one server implementation. there's no room for "oops a third party client/server made a bug that broke e2ee" since that doesn't exist.

@0xabad1dea :sigh:

my point is it should be reliable enough to be mandatory and seamless.

are we there yet? no

should it be a goal, as opposed to saying "well, in 15 years we should still leak all our messages to whatever server hosts them"? yes

you don't click through invalid cert warnings when logging into your bank because TLS works, and e2ee should get to that point

is it okay for a discord "competitor" now to not bother with mandatory e2ee because they wouldn't be able to make it seamless?

honestly, sure. i don't care. the problems people have with discord aren't the lack of e2ee, so something else also lacking e2ee isn't making that problem worse.

but "e2ee is a misfeature" is because of bugs which can be fixed, and design decisions that can be weakened to favor usability over security in some cases, not e2ee being inherently bad.

@0xabad1dea to be honest, i disagree, not because it's safe to fedpost in a chat of hundreds of users, but because it makes e2ee itself less suspicious, and more noisy to infiltrate

yes, a fed can lurk in a large member count e2ee chat, but that still involves the effort to join, and possibly even talk sometimes when spoken to. and they'll absolutely not be in every chat.

as opposed to "hey discord let us run grep across your message database"

like, we're at the point for the web where every website[maintained] is encrypted, even if it would be fine for most to be plaintext. (and we got to that point by making TLS pretty much free)

e2ee is only really considered optional/a misfeature in some cases because it's not free, but it should be.