[HN Gopher] E2E encrypted messaging on Instagram will no longer ...
___________________________________________________________________
E2E encrypted messaging on Instagram will no longer be supported
after 8 May
Author : mindracer
Score : 344 points
Date : 2026-03-13 13:03 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (help.instagram.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (help.instagram.com)
| some_furry wrote:
| I wonder if this is the start of a trend or just a one-off?
| nunobrito wrote:
| TikTok replied recently it wouldn't encrypt its messages
| either, citing user security as reason.
| odo1242 wrote:
| Probably a one off? Instagram's e2ee was opt-in from the start-
| and meanwhile Facebook Messenger is now "e2ee for everyone" and
| none of this is affecting the main e2ee messaging apps people
| use - WhatsApp, Signal, and iMessage
| garbawarb wrote:
| When Meta starting introducing E2E messaging it was a huge push.
| I wonder why they're doing away with it.
| john_strinlai wrote:
| i am guessing that they just dont really need to pretend to
| care anymore. e2e messaging was a big marketing push, not ever
| an ideological thing. i assume they no longer believe the
| marketing benefits outweigh the downsides.
| varispeed wrote:
| Probably Whatsapp is next, if it isn't quietly already.
| deafpolygon wrote:
| > Probably Whatsapp is next, if it isn't quietly already.
|
| And I will be pushing to remove WhatsApp if that's the
| case.
| garbawarb wrote:
| I doubt it, E2E isba huge part of Whatsapp's selling point
| considering it's exclusively a messaging app. Instagram is
| primarily a social app with messaging features.
| gzread wrote:
| Normal people don't choose a messaging app based on E2EE
| but based on whether their friends use it.
| gmerc wrote:
| It was for plausible deniability because of regulatory
| scrutiny. Regulator's dead now, so now there's no downside and
| only upsides to spying on your users.
| dngray wrote:
| They never did this for user privacy, and yes I think you're
| spot on. This was just to remove liability.
|
| Now it just costs them the data and development cost to
| maintain. Any remaining problems they'll throw some crappy AI
| moderator at to fix.
| gmerc wrote:
| Not hard to be right about this when you worked there at
| the time ;)
| infinitewars wrote:
| Palantir
| mpalmer wrote:
| > no downside
|
| That is not the view their legal department takes, I
| guarantee it. Congress ain't gonna keep its composition
| indefinitely.
| gzread wrote:
| PR. They wanted to seem like the good guys, but they get your
| messages through backdoors like the automatic backup.
| modeless wrote:
| You're thinking of Apple. WhatsApp backups are not stored by
| Meta. Apple is the company that breaks their "end-to-end"
| encryption by backing up the encryption keys to their own
| servers.
| topranks wrote:
| You can opt-in to encrypting those backups so Apple have no
| access.
| modeless wrote:
| Yes. I believe a small percentage of Apple users do this.
| Unfortunately that doesn't prevent Apple from reading
| your messages from the backups of the vast majority of
| people you correspond with.
| paxys wrote:
| Because they realized they need the data for AI
| zipping1549 wrote:
| We all know what this means.
| treesknees wrote:
| It could be a move to have parity with TikTok, where they claim
| it's for safety reasons. I've been seeing advertisements for
| Instagram touting their child/teen protection features. Seems
| like they're really trying to beat the allegations that Instagram
| is bad for children's health.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47241817
| dmix wrote:
| Protecting kids and Terrorism, always the reason why nobody is
| allowed to have privacy on the internet.
| nunobrito wrote:
| Cars nowadays are packed with microphones and permanently
| connected to the internet on daily basis so that drivers can
| have remote assistance when the car breaks once every 5 years
| or so.
| Sayrus wrote:
| I keep hearing this one. But at least for EU, the eCall
| system requires external communication to be disabled until
| activated during serious accident. It cannot be used for
| tracking the vehicle in real-time.
|
| Some parts of the legislation (https://eur-
| lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32...):
|
| > 2. The personal data processed pursuant to this
| Regulation shall only be used for the purpose of handling
| the emergency situations referred to in the first
| subparagraph of Article 5(2).
|
| > Manufacturers shall provide clear and comprehensive
| information in the owner's manual about the processing of
| data carried out through the 112-based eCall in-vehicle
| system. That information shall consist of:
|
| > the fact that there is no constant tracking of the
| vehicle;
|
| That vehicle nowadays are equipped with always-on internet
| and microphones is not related to remote assistance.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| This is such misdirection.
|
| Your car if new enough, IS reporting its diagnostics
| including GPS via cell. All the time. This isn't
| _exactly_ personally identifiable so they get away with
| it just fine.
|
| This is unrelated to the microphones and assistance
| systems.
| Sayrus wrote:
| Which is exactly my point. Cars are reporting on you, but
| tying that to remote assistance is disingenuous.
| cluckindan wrote:
| It becomes personally identifiable through correlations
| with other datasets.
|
| That is the kind of thing people allow when they click
| accept or decline on those pesky "we and our 195735
| partners would like to..." dialogs.
| nunobrito wrote:
| Kindly read point number 2 slowly.
|
| There are two definitions: a) Personal Data and b)
| Emergency Situations
|
| What is an emergency situation and how can a car
| determine it is one? These are "smart" cars which aren't
| nowadays smart enough to process all your data locally,
| so that data is sent to servers elsewhere which process
| if either points a) or b) apply.
|
| It is your choice to believe that voice data is ever
| deleted once acquired by governments and entities thirsty
| to benefit from that information.
|
| For security experts this is just another "I told you so"
| within a few years.
| youknownothing wrote:
| And also so employees of said companies can spy on drivers
| and make fun of them:
| https://www.reuters.com/technology/tesla-workers-shared-
| sens...
| stephbook wrote:
| Which just shows that consumers don't care. Tesla's
| camera surveillance wasn't exactly secret.
| nobodyandproud wrote:
| Equating what companies get away with, as the clear
| signal to what consumers care about.
|
| And billionaires and nine-day old alts wonder why they
| need a bunker.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| Customers care, but not enough to actually change
| purchasing patterns.
| mounram wrote:
| They care, but it is not in their top priorities
| officeplant wrote:
| One of my favorite things about going EV is the forums tend
| to be full of paranoid nerds which means someone will be
| willing to try desoldering the cell modem off their boards
| to see what happens.
| hackingonempty wrote:
| Also drug dealers and money launderers.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Infocalyp.
| ..
| PunchyHamster wrote:
| More like excuse
| varispeed wrote:
| How these protections are working when I get served literal
| porn every couple of shorts on Instagram?
| jszymborski wrote:
| Protect your kids from whom? Surely not Meta, which is my main
| concern.
| plagiarist wrote:
| It certainly is unsafe for their AI training corpus. Win / win
| if they can also lie about protecting children as a motivation.
| maqp wrote:
| The sad part is, Instagram is exceptionally damaging to kids
| for a disjoint set of reasons.
| throwfaraway4 wrote:
| As is social media in general. I highly recommend reading the
| Anxious Generation
| butlike wrote:
| It's bad for EVERYONE's health. Try to limit your usage and
| you'll feel better. I promise you'll feel better.
| gausswho wrote:
| Is this legitimate? It's so incoherent to see this blurb at the
| top saying it's being retired while everything underneath is
| pitching the value of e2e.
| dcliu wrote:
| On the other hand Messenger has moved to only supporting e2ee
| chats, wonder why the difference.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| To me, Instagram is a public platform at its core, where people
| publish things for the whole world to see. Private messages are
| just a secondary feature. It is like having a conversation in a
| restaurant, where the guy at the next table can listen to
| everything, but usually doesn't. Good enough for planning a
| surprise party, not for truly sensitive information. Kind of
| like private messages in Reddit, Discord, etc... a convenient
| feature, but don't expect real privacy.
|
| Messenger has a higher expectation of privacy, Facebook is more
| at the "group of friends" level. While Instagram is a public
| restaurant, Facebook is more like a house party. WhatsApp has
| the highest expectation of privacy as it is designed for
| private, often one-to-one conversations first.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| Sure, but if you already have e2ee, it takes work to remove
| it... why invest the time to do that?
| gzread wrote:
| It also takes work to keep it working and it may have a lot
| of bugs already, that are hard to fix because of it. A
| non-E2EE chat app is very easy to make.
| paxys wrote:
| WhatsApp and Messenger are pure messaging apps. For Instagram,
| DMs are just a tiny part of the overall experience.
| villgax wrote:
| just waiting on whatsapp to rug pull as well & then bye bye
| privacy & meta from my life
| dylan604 wrote:
| Wouldn't bye bye meta be hello privacy into your life?
| arunc wrote:
| Wait, people trust communication via Instagram thinking they are
| secure?
| blitzar wrote:
| Facebook were at both ends, the encryption was between the
| ends.
| arunc wrote:
| Ah, OK. I was never an Facebook/Instagram user, so thanks for
| explaining that.
| morpheuskafka wrote:
| So apparently this was opt-in, much like Telegram's OTR chat
| feature, and thus completely different than WhatsApp where it has
| always been default. Not a good look regardless, but the few who
| went into chat settings for a specific person to turn this on in
| the first place will likely just switch to WhatsApp or another
| app rather than continue without it.
| yobid20 wrote:
| because they want to read your messages for training ai and for
| advertising
| everdrive wrote:
| There's a general trend right now against privacy and in a more
| general sense against freedom. More and more companies are on
| board with it. I'm not sure if anyone in HN has any useful advice
| in this regard. I feel like I don't know what to do about the
| internet for the next 5-10 years. Does this particular measure
| matter very much? No, but it's another brick in the wall.
| krystalgamer wrote:
| i don't understand this doomer mentality regarding the
| internet.
|
| internet is a service that you choose what to engage and how.
| don't like a platform? find another, build it or stop using it
| altogether.
|
| personally, i find these things really great has it helps nudge
| people into the more decentralized web. a few years ago those
| who were pushing for privacy respecting apps and platforms were
| deemed too paranoid.
| ultratalk wrote:
| Network effects will keep a person on a platform until a
| critical mass of their social circle decide to leave all at
| once. I'm no expert, but I suspect that that critical mass is
| pretty high, maybe more than 50% of a person's circle. So
| it's not exactly vanilla free-market competition. Entrenched
| players have a pretty big advantage.
| krystalgamer wrote:
| what does your social circle being on Instagram bring to
| you? seriously, this picture-sharing app has evolved into
| this content spread machine that brings very little value.
| ultratalk wrote:
| When most of your social circle exists on one platform,
| you tend to use that platform less for its specific
| features, and more because of the fact that all your
| friends are there. I don't personally use Instagram, and
| this is anecdotal information, but I know a lot of people
| who only use Instagram to see what their friends and
| family are up to, and to watch the occasional reel.
|
| But you're absolutely right about Instagram's evolution.
| It's crazy.
| krystalgamer wrote:
| this is a very 21st century thing, the ability to know
| what everyone is doing at any time. extremely voyeuristic
| too.
|
| the only social circle that truly matters is the
| geographically close one. no amount of E2EE or fancy chat
| app will replace being physically present.
| tredre3 wrote:
| First you said that people should use decentralized
| platforms. Now you acknowledge that there's nobody of
| value on those platforms so now you say people should
| stop wanting to connect in the first place.
|
| I mean, okay? Next time just say social media is a
| cancer, and don't waste our time moving goal posts.
| happosai wrote:
| Ah Network effect, That's why we all are still using Skype,
| microsoft messenger and ICQ.
|
| You don't have to wait for everyone to switch, in fact it's
| pretty normal to reach different people on different chats.
|
| https://xkcd.com/1810/
| Schlagbohrer wrote:
| Many people make their livings from these platforms. They
| cant leave without abandoning most of their income stream.
| krystalgamer wrote:
| find a different employer? what kind of argument is that.
| peyton wrote:
| As a California resident I request to download my personal data
| from every service I can, and I'm constantly surprised. We each
| have scores for all kinds of things. The local power company
| keeps a "Green Ideology" score on me.
| wiether wrote:
| How is that even legal?
| stackskipton wrote:
| Because it's not illegal. Most data privacy laws just
| require that user can see data collected about them and
| prevent sale of said data in optout fashion.
|
| There are rarely laws around preventing collection of said
| data or using said data for some new service.
| wiether wrote:
| But it's not any data, it's political orientation data!
|
| Sometimes people talk about GDPR being only the cookie
| banner, but thanks to it, its forbidden to collect that
| kind of data.
|
| https://gdpr-info.eu/art-9-gdpr/
| natch wrote:
| This is in the US. It's a free country. Things are legal by
| default (that's a _good_ thing) until the system notices
| them and makes a law.
|
| Having seen how things work where freedom is not the
| default, I much prefer freedom.
| johnisgood wrote:
| It makes me curious what other scores (I would call them
| labels) there are.
| newsoftheday wrote:
| When I see the word "score", it reminds me of the CCP social
| scoring system.
| scarecrowbob wrote:
| Weird... when I see something done by US-Based capitalist
| and attributed to communists half a world away, it makes me
| think of the Powell Memo.
| newsoftheday wrote:
| That is weird, the US didn't ask the CCP to invent social
| scoring.
| dheera wrote:
| How do they know your ideology? Are they scraping your social
| media or running sentiment analysis on your customer service
| chats?
| cucumber3732842 wrote:
| They probably don't care. It's probably a mostly BS number.
| But they probably have to have it and have it at least look
| like they're trying to be serious about generating it in
| order to qualify for preferential treatment on some sort of
| permitting or write off some class of investment in a
| slightly better way at tax time or something.
|
| I'm not sure if this is better or worse than them doing it
| because they believe in it.
| _djo_ wrote:
| It's likely some customer segmentation label generated
| through PCA or some other clustering approach.
|
| The qualifying criteria is probably just having picked an
| offer for renewable-sourced energy in the past, indicating
| that it has some importance to you. So you will be given
| more green energy offers in future.
|
| Every company segments its customer base this way for
| marketing. Sometimes it's even useful.
| add-sub-mul-div wrote:
| You're on a site with a surprisingly high amount of support
| among commenters for trading privacy and freedom for
| convenience and comfort where it aligns with their
| religion/other biases or desired consumer experiences. I don't
| know if this the best place to ask for advice.
| pjc50 wrote:
| I'm not sure people realize that HN is already at the most
| libertarian end, and all the discourse spaces which are much
| closer to actual power and legislation are much less pro-
| privacy.
| davorak wrote:
| Historically, like 10-20 years ago, libertarian would be
| staunchly pro privacy. Is this no longer the case? If
| libertarians have dropped this stance, since it is so close
| to what was the core beliefs, I really have no mental model
| of the philosophy/politics for libertarians any more.
|
| Any primer/link on what current libertarians believe is
| welcome.
| natch wrote:
| It's possible to want something without wanting to live
| in a system where there is a nanny to enforce that thing.
| Other means of enforcement exist, such as free markets.
| scarecrowbob wrote:
| You might find it useful to distinguish between right and
| left libertarians.
|
| All my anarchist (left libertarian) friends are pretty
| consistently opposed to state and corporate surveillance.
| There is plenty of theory in a canon of literature that
| goes back to the mid 19th century, even as there are many
| subgroups and spurs off that general line of thought all
| with their own sets of (usually somewhat) consistent
| lines.
|
| If you want something short and brutal, I am a fan of
| "Desert" by anonymous, but "A Utopia of Rules" by David
| Graeber is not a bad thing to read and probably closer to
| a popular line. Or the CIA-Coded Yale academic James
| Scott has a lot to say, "Two Cheers for Anarchism" and
| "Seeing Like a State" both seem to have influenced a lot
| of people.
|
| Historically "right libertarians" (the US Libertarian
| political party, for instance) have been, uh, "less
| consistent" in their thinking, so you might have a hard
| time finding anything that looks like a "philosophy" in
| that branch of "thought". Plenty of goofy-ass ideas, but
| little consistency except a strange ability to
| begrudgingly conform to GOP politics at the end of the
| day.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Yes, but there's really not very many libertarians left
| who haven't cast their lot in for Republican support,
| resulting in the present situation. Not that there were
| many to begin with.
| iamnothere wrote:
| Reddit seems to have drifted back to more libertarian than
| HN on privacy issues. At least in technical subreddits. Not
| sure why that is, perhaps there are more users here whose
| salaries are tied to surveillance.
| aavci wrote:
| I wonder if promoting open-source tooling and best practices
| could make it easier for new apps to adopt security features
| like E2E encryption. For example, someone building a chat app
| might not add E2E encryption unless they have access to user-
| friendly tools and are encouraged to do so.
|
| Startups that initially choose the more private implementation
| version often face a disadvantage. They may not see immediate
| benefits and instead experience drawbacks, such as caring a bit
| more than their competitors. For example, an AI plugin using
| local large language models for privacy might not be rewarded
| as much as a competitor who fully embraces cloud-based
| solutions.
| starkparker wrote:
| That's all fine and good but this is Meta removing an
| existing implementation. How would you stop decisions like
| that?
| ls612 wrote:
| It's depressing to think that after the abuses people suffered
| during the lockdowns the response has been to embrace
| authoritarianism even more. It makes me fear how far this could
| go before people realize how bad it is.
|
| Fundamentally I think that liberal democracy won't be able to
| survive compute, communication, and storage being cheap,
| combined with asymmetric encryption. I really think there
| should be an article illustrating just how much that last one
| is fundamental to making the apparatus of control cheap and
| effective in a way that 20th century regimes could only dream
| of.
| Larrikin wrote:
| What abuses?
| reactordev wrote:
| If you're a good boy then you have nothing to hide right? Not
| even your passwords...
| john_strinlai wrote:
| unfortunately, since the messaging/trend isnt "we are against
| privacy" (it is "we are protecting children, which reluctantly
| means we all have to sacrifice a wee bit of privacy"), it is
| really hard to fight back without being labelled as someone who
| is _against_ protecting children.
|
| but the advice is basically the same as it always has been:
|
| - talk to your friends and family about it. do it with passion,
| but without hyperbole or conspiracy or aggression. any person
| you can convince to care is a win. organize with like-minded
| people.
|
| - talk to your representatives in government. vote for
| representatives that are pro-privacy (when possible). convince
| your like-minded friends and family to do the same.
|
| - to the greatest extent possible, dont purchase/use
| products/services which are facilitating the trend. (but, you
| also need to be realistic or you _will_ burn out! and that is a
| bigger loss overall).
|
| - if you are a decision-maker at work, or have any sort of
| input, leverage it as best as you can to make pro-privacy
| business decisions. however, similar to the above point,
| recognize that you still need to be realistic and dont get
| yourself fired arguing some decision. it is better to make
| 1,000 nudges in the right direction than it is to be fired/burn
| out _trying_ to make 1 big nudge.
|
| - support organizations that align with your beliefs. this can
| be monetarily, or by volunteering, or by spreading awareness of
| the organization itself. for example, _many_ people have never
| heard of the electronic frontier foundation and have no idea
| what they do. lots of people dont know of the ACLU either (or,
| maybe they have heard the name, but dont know what they do or
| why it matters).
| trinsic2 wrote:
| >unfortunately, since the messaging/trend isnt "we are
| against privacy" (it is "we are protecting children, which
| reluctantly means we all have to sacrifice a wee bit of
| privacy"), it is really hard to fight back without being
| labelled as someone who is against protecting children.
|
| That's not what I am seeing on the ground. Many discord users
| I have seen talk about this issue frame this as an attack on
| freedom and privacy by hiding it behind the same narrative
| that has been used so many times before of protecting
| children. You can only push fake narratives so far until
| people start getting the message that people are hiding
| nefarious attacks on society behind fake movements.
| john_strinlai wrote:
| > _Many discord users I have seen talk about this issue
| frame this as an attack on freedom_
|
| good! ideally, someone is helping them organize and action
| those thoughts and feelings outside of whatever discord
| channel you are in.
|
| i am referring to how it is being framed by the people
| pushing the agenda. age verification laws (as an easy
| example) arent being advertised as "we want to spy on you",
| they are being advertised as "this will protect children
| from harms".
|
| talk to debbie in accounting instead of babmorley420 in
| discord, and ask her opinion. she is not likely to frame it
| as an attack on privacy/freedom. she is likely to frame it
| as a necessary sacrifice for the greater good. and her
| opinion also matters, she also votes. we need to convince
| the debbies of the world -- they outnumber the
| babmorley420s
| trinsic2 wrote:
| Agreed. What I meant to say is at least the younger
| generation are starting to see past this smoke screen
| more so now than maybe 20 years ago.
| john_strinlai wrote:
| that is very refreshing to hear.
|
| i teach tech in college and just earlier today made a
| post about how i am not seeing the same when i compare my
| current students to students 5, 10, or 15 years ago. i
| hope that _i_ am the one in the bubble.
| fsflover wrote:
| > I feel like I don't know what to do about the internet for
| the next 5-10 years.
|
| Switch to decentralized, e2ee alternatives, support
| https://eff.org
| trinsic2 wrote:
| I feel like e2ee on phones with OSes from the big two is a
| lost cause. I'll bet this is the year where open
| hardware/bios starts getting more popular, hopefully. So we
| can have open hardware/software.
| fsflover wrote:
| GNU/Linux phones already exist. See: Librem 5 and
| Pinephone.
| subscribed wrote:
| If you like privacy without security then yeah .
| fsflover wrote:
| There is no security in a vacuum. Security depends on
| your threat model. I use Firefox with NoScript and never
| run untrusted apps on my Librem 5.
| vova_hn2 wrote:
| I find it really off putting, how weak is their hardware,
| compared to a normal Android phone in a similar price
| range.
| fsflover wrote:
| Weak hardware can work quite well with optimized and non-
| bloated software (which doesn't constantly phone home).
| For example, maps and Youtube work smoothly on Pinephone
| with SXMo. See also: https://puri.sm/posts/the-danger-of-
| focusing-on-specs/.
| vova_hn2 wrote:
| I hope so, but I just don't understand what exactly
| causes such massive price difference.
|
| Is it because this kind of phones are a very niche
| product so they can't benefit from the economy of scale?
|
| Maybe android phone manufacturers can get better deals
| from chip manufacturers because they buy chips in large
| quantities?
| fsflover wrote:
| Niche product, non-standard components, strict
| requirements of free drivers with GNU/Linux support:
| https://puri.sm/posts/breaking-ground/
| fragmede wrote:
| Yes exactly that. The weak hardware at those prices are
| the best they can afford. The economy of scale that they
| can afford let's them charge that little for flagship
| phone and still makes money. People won't put their money
| where their mouths are, we're all too cheap to pay what
| things are really worth.
| sisve wrote:
| Even with e/os/ or another u De-googled version of android?
|
| Not directly to you but in general: I do not think (most)
| of Europe is going the same direction as US. I actually see
| a lot of hope in response to EU leaders about digital
| infrastructure, communication & security. we have started
| to stop realing on America, but it will take 10-20 years
| before you see the entire crash trump made
| gzread wrote:
| Is Google snooping your SimpleX chats?
| Spooky23 wrote:
| The US is building out the infrastructure for a police state.
| The people who control the consolidated tech platforms are
| either spearheading or collaborating with that process. Privacy
| as a concept isn't even in the cards.
|
| You need to be prepared to avoid saying naughty things on the
| internet. Otherwise, perhaps someone will figure out that you
| great-great grandfather didn't sign in the right spot in 1897
| and you're presence in the United States is void, retroactive
| to your birth. Off to El Salvador with you, enemy of the
| people.
| mc32 wrote:
| It feels to me Europe and the UK, in the western world, are
| further ahead on the legal road to surveillance than the US.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| Someone pointed out something to me and it's really struck
| a chord with me.
|
| In the USA, we _hate_ the government collecting information
| on us, but shrug our shoulders when corporations do it.
|
| In Europe, it's the exact opposite. They created GDPR to
| restrict how corporations collect and share data about you,
| but they shrug their shoulders at government doing it.
|
| Obviously, this is incredibly reductive and over-
| simplified, but the general idea of it feels pretty true.
| toxik wrote:
| Sorry, this is just not true. Stasi was a government
| agency, and it was from this kind of thing that European
| privacy advocacy sprung up.
| rurp wrote:
| Just want to clarify that "naughty" doesn't at all mean "bad"
| or "immoral". It means "Anything any current ot future regime
| will dislike"
| wolttam wrote:
| Pretty safe to say that you pointing that out counts as
| naughty.
|
| And so does my response to your comment.
|
| But I do wonder if self-censure is really the best
| strategy.
| query_demotion wrote:
| >The US is building out the infrastructure for a police
| state.
|
| Take the Utah Data Center
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Data_Center), combine it
| with the Disposition Matrix
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposition_Matrix),
| informally known as a kill list for even US citizens, and it
| does seem like you're getting a Police State!
| hypeatei wrote:
| A lot of our current privacy and liberty woes were
| exacerbated by 9/11. Can you imagine a Church Committee in
| 2026? Me neither.
|
| Three letter agencies have way too much power and they've
| shaped our culture+laws for the worse. Osama Bin Laden has
| done way more damage to American citizens' lives than he
| could've ever dreamed of.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| By design.
|
| Just like the KGB and Putin's minions, Bin Laden
| correctly saw fault lines and weaknesses in the US an
| exploited them. He did what he did with a long-range
| context in mind. The "three letter agencies" were
| neutered in the 90s as part of the peace dividend which
| is why he was successful. The Russians used "active
| measures" with intelligence in the US 2016 among other
| times and Bin Laden chose terrorist violence. The Russian
| misinformation strategy is tried and true and corporate
| actors now use it successfully as well.
|
| The whole thing sucks. This Iran adventure lays the
| vulnerability of the US military machine pretty bare.
| More, escalated conflict is probably in the world's
| future for decades to come.
| query_demotion wrote:
| This wasn't by design. Obama had options. He campaigned
| against mass surveillance but flip-flopped once in
| office, installing the very surveillance levers he
| criticized. "No more secrecy," he said. "That is a
| commitment that I make to you."[1] If his only option was
| to install these surveillance levers, then I guess
| American democracy is just a lost cause.
|
| [1] https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/obama-on-
| mass-gov...
| dfxm12 wrote:
| In this specific case you can avoid Meta. In general, if you're
| in the US, you probably have a primary election coming up soon
| and certainly have a general election in November. Ask your
| politicians what their thoughts are on these topics and make an
| informed vote. Continue to pressure the incumbents as well.
| dheera wrote:
| E2EE on Instagram was never real, trustable E2EE. No open-
| source client, no way to verify that private key is never sent
| to server, and encryption of a key with a low-entropy PIN is
| effectively plaintext.
| j_bizzle wrote:
| I'm truly on the fence about all of this.
|
| On one hand, I think a lot of the larger issues and divisions
| we've seen in society over the last 20 years are a direct
| result of our primary means of communication, entertainment and
| information being one that allows such ease of impersonation.
| While most of us here understand just how much Internet content
| is created with influence as a goal, and the posted by accounts
| with false identities, a majority of people still don't. (And
| many who do don't understand just how prevalent it is). I also
| think that sadly we've demonstrated that when people feel they
| are anonymous and beyond consequence, they're willing to say
| and advocate for some terrible things which they might
| otherwise not have, and seeing others say those things
| reinforces their willingness to say and do them. If social
| media and internet norms of today had held the original
| Facebook model of requiring verification of your actual
| identity (back in the day .edu email days), I truly think we
| would live in a much different and in many ways better world.
|
| On the other hand, I fully acknowledge that many of the people
| pushing for the removal of privacy and encryption are not doing
| so for altruistic reasons, but so that they have a more data to
| mine and monetize, or have the ability to monitor to a
| frightening degree, and that these tools once available will be
| available to any regime or government, so even if the ones
| currently pushing do have naively good intentions, the next
| ones very well may not.
|
| But, I also struggle with the knowledge that for sophisticated
| parties, the privacy that most people think they have is a sham
| to begin with. There are already many tools available to piece
| together information sources and build a horrifyingly complex
| and accurate picture of individuals activities and identities.
| So I wonder if the illusion of privacy isn't worse than the
| public at least being forced to confront the fact that they
| have none in the first place, and therefore being able to truly
| see and address the issue, while the security minded and
| technical individuals will always find a way obfuscate their
| identity and activity, just as they always have.
| everdrive wrote:
| In my opinion anonymity is a great red herring. The worst
| offenders on the internet have verified accounts and are
| public figures. The problem is algorithmic content,
| prioritizing for engagement and outrage, and then connecting
| _everyone_. We had what was effectively anonymity in the 90s,
| but really had NONE of the crazy society-breaking extremism
| we see now. Getting rid of anonymity will really do NOTHING
| to halt the march of internet-fueled extremism.
| abnercoimbre wrote:
| Everything is a sliding scale. There _would_ be improvement
| from verified identities (and doing so through a zero-trust
| network is feasible.) I agree the worst actors wouldn 't
| care at all, and in that case we address the algorithmic
| amplification problem.
| salawat wrote:
| This. People don't recognize that a tech company with an
| algorithmic feed is indistinguishable from a public
| awareness filter. It allows a couple hundred to 1000's of
| people to set the Overton window of millions/billions. When
| we actually didn't go algorithmic and went off more natural
| filtering (geographic, chronological, scope/impact based),
| it was a modality that one would be hard pressed to even
| find a schoolchild that couldn't end up being able to
| meaningfully navigate the space with due training. This is,
| of course, exactly why monied individuals foam at owning
| any of the few consolidated media outlets/tech companies.
| Societal scale leverage on the machine of public awareness.
| nemomarx wrote:
| Facebook accounts today still have identity verification
| (they often ask for scans of IDs, etc) and yet it doesn't
| seem to result in a noticeably improved discourse there
| compared to say, Twitter before Musks takeover. I don't think
| anonymity actually changes discourse that much.
| wslh wrote:
| I sometimes feel a bit weird about this. In the 90s it felt
| like "we" won the crypto wars: PGP, the fight over export
| controls, the Clipper Chip, etc. There was a strong sense that
| privacy and strong crypto had become settled questions.
| caconym_ wrote:
| > I'm not sure if anyone in HN has any useful advice in this
| regard.
|
| Self host. It's still possible to buy computer hardware and
| install FOSS replacements for most/all of the services you
| need, and plumb it all through to your mobile devices using
| wireguard/tailscale. If you're behind a CGNAT you can proxy it
| through a cheap VPS that won't fuck you on bandwidth costs.
| Thanks to Proxmox, I probably have better uptime on my services
| than e.g. Github these days.
|
| When it becomes impossible to get open PC hardware, I don't
| know. I like to think I will just stop using the internet for
| anything besides the bare minimum NPC type activities that are
| required to engage with the institutions of society.
| abnercoimbre wrote:
| If you don't know where to start check out the Linux Prepper
| [0] podcast. (I'm not affiliated, just a listener who enjoys
| the show.)
|
| [0] https://podcast.james.network/@linuxprepper/episodes
| Cider9986 wrote:
| You could try becoming a privacy advocate.
| https://www.privacyguides.org/en/activism/
| Bender wrote:
| Never rely on a platform used by the masses to perform E2EE. It
| is far too easy to strip away E2EE for targeted users without
| their knowledge as they maintain the server and client code. This
| advise is to protect from corporations gobbling up _and
| ultimately leaking_ sensitive data. Spooks can target the device
| itself via debug access for nation state level threats.
|
| Consider instead using a code word or phrase to move sensitive
| conversations to something self hosted such as jabber using OMEMO
| _XEP-0384_ and XEP-0373 _OpenPGP for XMPP_ and SASL SCRAM. OMEMO
| is an implementation of the Signal protocol on top of the XMPP
| protocol.
|
| _e.g. "_Expletive_! I stubbed my toe!" other-person: "lol geezer
| watch where you are walking."_ conversation quietly and
| _temporarily_ moves to the pre-shared self-hosted Jabber server.
| Temporarily because going dark can draw attention. Feed the big
| chat platform boring garbage and misdirection.
| impossiblefork wrote:
| People catch the spooks and their exploits all the time though.
|
| It is possible to defend against them. Maybe not on your phone
| though.
| Bender wrote:
| Agreed. I just mentioned that for the spooks who don't like I
| am suggesting moving sensitive conversations elsewhere using
| basic opsec. I assume the farm recruits on HN are probably
| just as concerned about AI taking their jobs. Surely someone
| has bought AI a coffee unprompted by now, maybe even flirted
| with the AI.
| impossiblefork wrote:
| I don't quite understand your comment. I also disagree with
| some implications of the final bit of your first comment:
| encryption is obviously basic privacy, but the interesting
| bit is who you're talking to.
|
| So having a signal for switching mediums is something that
| I feel indicates thinking in the wrong direction.
| Bender wrote:
| _So having a signal for switching mediums is something
| that I feel indicates thinking in the wrong direction._
|
| It's not for everyone. I grew up with code phrases. My
| mom knew that if I said _" I love you"_ to send in the
| cavalry. We had similar processes in the military. If I
| answered the phone a particular way they knew the remote
| site was under siege.
| impossiblefork wrote:
| That's an okay use, but in that use you're not attempting
| to achieving privacy.
|
| Everyone knows you talk to your parents, but code phrases
| are not a way to get privacy.
| Bender wrote:
| It's not for privacy _in the way you may be thinking_.
| This was long before cell phones or the internet existed
| and the conversation would have been over the rotary
| phone and it is assumed someone is in the house with me
| that should not be. Goal being police have authorization
| to kick down the door and assist the person or people
| that are nutritionally deficient in lead.
| Zak wrote:
| Unless you're actually a spy, there's no reason to do this.
| Just use your secure solution all the time with those
| conversation partners who are willing to use it.
| Bender wrote:
| _Unless you 're actually a spy, there's no reason to do this.
| Just use your secure solution all the time with those
| conversation partners who are willing to use it._
|
| Fundamentally I agree with you but people will stay on the
| platforms where their friends are. To change that the
| platform would have to do something really bad such as
| forcing age checks and even then I think many will just put
| up with it to stay connected to their friends.
| jonathantf2 wrote:
| This feature has never been available to me- it just threw an
| error each time. Wonder how far it actually got rolled out?
| j45 wrote:
| This could obviously tie to sending you more ads.
|
| It could also tag people communicating about topics ig chat that
| it is actively suppressing.
|
| They may be looking for an uproar to reverse the policy as so
| far, it's just words.
| Papazsazsa wrote:
| Socials are caught in the innovator's dilemma.
|
| Given the dependence our society now has on the internet, it's
| bonkers to me that more VCs aren't rethinking their investment
| strategy. Privacy is not some niche concern anymore, check out
| the response to Flock for example.
| Cider9986 wrote:
| Some are. See simplex.chat, anytype.io.
| alex1138 wrote:
| I don't use IG although they dearly want me to, giving me a popup
| every time I visit, but let me talk about FB for a second (and
| btw FB wanted to enable cross-platform messaging on the platforms
| they own - Meta - which seems anti-trust-y) - when they
| introduced encryption on FB, they made it mandatory. They opted
| everyone in, and it broke Messenger. If you delete cookies you
| might also delete messages. Isn't that convenient?
| CrzyLngPwd wrote:
| Did they give a reason why are they doing this?
| avallach wrote:
| Isn't this actually improving safety by openly admitting how
| things always were in practice?
|
| Any e2e encryption provided by the same entity who fully controls
| both the blackbox clients, and the server in between, is just a
| security theatre that they can selectively bypass anytime with
| very little risk of detection. Not really much better than simple
| client to server encryption.
|
| Truly safe e2e requires open source client provided by a trusted
| entity who is as much as possible independent from the one who
| provides the untrusted transport layer. Eg how pgp email works.
| john_strinlai wrote:
| one thing to consider is how just the _optics_ of major players
| using e2e was an overall benefit.
|
| people who otherwise would have gone their entire lives without
| ever hearing about encryption were exposed to the term and the
| marketing convinced them that encryption and privacy was a
| valuable thing, even if they didnt fully understand the
| mechanisms or why e2e might not necessarily be very effective
| in specific circumstances.
|
| later, when presented between option a and option b, where one
| has encryption and the other doesnt, they are more likely to
| choose the one with it ("well, if instagram and facebook use it
| and say it is good...")
| gzread wrote:
| If someone's given the choice between say Instagram and IRC,
| and chooses Instagram because they heard it has E2EE, that's
| a loss.
| john_strinlai wrote:
| perfect is the enemy of good, etc etc.
|
| between signal and plain text, it is easier to convince
| friends to use signal if they see positive marketing about
| encryption on other popular apps they use. it is easier to
| convince them to encrypt their backups before uploading
| them to their google drive. hell, its just a good
| conversation starter to introduce encryption/online privacy
| to people that never really think about it. that type of
| thing.
|
| those same friends are not going to use irc regardless. not
| really a loss if it was never even on the table.
| GoblinSlayer wrote:
| And Big Brother realized this optics was a mistake.
| chis wrote:
| E2E encryption lets Meta turn down government subpoenas because
| they can say they truly don't have access to the unencrypted
| data.
|
| I can't say I really mind this change by Meta that much overall
| though. Anyone who's serious about privacy probably knew better
| than to pick "Instagram chat" as their secure channel. And on
| the other hand having the chats available helps protect minors.
| iamthejuan wrote:
| This happened to my girlfriend and me twice on Messenger. On
| two consecutive nights, we heard a male voice with an American
| accent speaking as if he were talking to someone else, almost
| like they were conducting some kind of operation. It seemed as
| though he suddenly realized that we could hear him, after which
| the voice abruptly disappeared. The following night, it
| happened again, but this time the voice sounded like that of an
| African American woman. The situation was similar to the
| previous night. From that night, we have not used it to
| communicate and used Signal instead.
| prox wrote:
| You mean like a voicecall on Messenger? That is creepy.
| root_axis wrote:
| What do you imagine was going on here?
| browsingonly wrote:
| I work on products that feature live monitoring capabilities.
| There's no connection to the monitoring side's microphone (or
| camera) -- why would there be? I'm not sure why there would
| be for their products.
|
| Whatever the cause, it sure sounds like it was a strange and
| unnerving experience.
| exe34 wrote:
| did you check your carbon monoxide alarm batteries?
| Synaesthesia wrote:
| It's all about trust at the end of the day. And given that it
| was exposed that Apple, Microsoft, Meta, Google etc all
| collaborated with the US government to provide surveillance
| (PRISM) by Edward Snowden, how we can trust them ever again?
| fragmede wrote:
| Did they collaborate? Google freaked out when Snowden
| revealed what the NSA was doing.
| mnahkies wrote:
| I don't disagree, but I think there is a distinction between
| "everything is e2ee, but specific conversations may be MiTM
| without detection" and "nothing is e2ee and can be
| retrospectively inspected at will" that goes a little beyond
| security theatre - makes it more analogous to old fashioned
| wiretaps in my mind.
|
| Obviously it involves trust that it isn't actually "we say it's
| e2ee but actually we also MiTM every conversation"
| dgrin91 wrote:
| One of the scary things is that not even this really works.
| Ignoring supply chain attacks, most people treat any client as
| effectively black box. When was the last time you read through
| the code of a messaging app? How do you know its safe? Maybe
| _you_ read through it, but 99% of people don't.
| dhblumenfeld1 wrote:
| wouldn't signal fall under this category (same entity control
| the client and server in between) but they have no way of
| peaking inside any envelopes?
| kevincloudsec wrote:
| the timeline for all of this is not a coincidence. meta spent
| millions lobbying for age verification laws that require content
| scanning. hard to scan content that's encrypted.
| MMTlover wrote:
| Use this https://www.ricochetrefresh.net/ Chat and file transfer
| over tor
| mvrckhckr wrote:
| The only reason I can think of for this change is governmental
| pressure. I don't see how it benefits the platform itself (nor
| its users).
| gzread wrote:
| I can think of some. Less code complexity to support a feature
| that didn't work properly and nobody was using? More ability to
| detect spam?
| arlort wrote:
| I can think of a few reasons why a company built on profiling
| (and advertising to) user interests might be interested in the
| private conversations of their users
| paxys wrote:
| There is a product reason - AI features are fundamentally
| incompatible with E2EE. If they want to bring more AI generated
| experiences and content into Instagram then the data needs to
| be accessible by them.
| methuselah_in wrote:
| It feels like it's time to move to lemon writing over paper on
| normal post. Only way you can no talk freely.
| quectophoton wrote:
| Except instead of sending through post offices, it'd probably
| be through "runners" like on Mirror's Edge.
| EmbarrassedHelp wrote:
| In a sane world, removing E2E encrypted messaging would be worthy
| of huge fines.
| paxys wrote:
| Everyone is hypothesizing government backdoors and whatever else
| but to me there's a simpler and more obvious reason - AI.
|
| Companies started pushing E2EE a few years ago because users'
| private messaging data used to be a liability. Now that the data
| can be fed into LLMs for training and inference its value has
| gone up _significantly_ , and the privacy and security tradeoffs
| are suddenly worthwhile.
|
| PMs across the industry are pushing product decks with
| "conversational AI assistants" to get their next promotion. I've
| been in more than one of these meetings myself. If the data is
| encrypted then there's no way to build this kind of stuff.
| Archonical wrote:
| It's around the same time they announced their Applied AI org
| under Boz, which is responsible for data for
| Avocado/Mango/Watermelon training now. The timing certainly
| doesn't help.
| jbverschoor wrote:
| Just make it an OS feature. There's no need for the application
| to know the exact contents. Other than search, but for most
| messaging and other apps the device can easily do indexing
|
| Textbox with attribute "encrypted". Keys in the enclave/keychain.
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