You know instance admins can read your direct messages in the fediverse? Twitter and Facebook also can - and sometimes do - read your private messages, and they have infrastructure to comply with law enforcement requests. I'd love to see some end-to-end encryption built into Mastodon clients.
@lambadalambda @micahflee the solution here is not to use a different tool, but to fix the tool we're using. There is no reason why #Mastodon couldn't support #e2e #encryption in private messages.
@lambadalambda @micahflee but that's the tool people are using. I use XMPP+OTR, e-mail+PGP, Signal, etc., but if somebody is not as tech-savvy but is already here, I don't see why they should not have the option of encrypting private messages.
Or, put a bit differently: https://mastodon.social/media/N9MHhHNBYckrKdO8bPc
@lambadalambda @micahflee Yes, that is a concern. Still better than nothing though.
Also, you're completely ignoring apps. If #Mastodon has official and standardized support for #e2e #encryption, apps can implement it, closing the JS loophole.
@pettter @rysiek @micahflee FWIW, I agree with @lambadalambda - it can be argued that private messages are simply a misfeature in OStatus since they cannot be truly private without extra (non-standard) hacks.
Keeping things simple is valuable; using the right tool for the job (some other protocol for private messages) is good engineering.
@HerraBRE @lambadalambda @micahflee @rysiek @pettter "is good engineering" is not the same as "is a good user experience" then, no?
@lieselotte @pettter @rysiek @micahflee @lambadalambda Well, I'd venture that poor engineering usually leads to a poor user experience sooner or later. The fundamental user expectation is "software that works".
Mastodon and GNU Social and others could all agree to integrate XMPP (or even SMTP) for direct messages. It doesn't need to be in the OStatus protocol.