this post was submitted on 03 May 2024
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Yeah i am not a fan of services trying to cover all needs that people might ask for. This is a public forum system, if you start adding things like this to it, the protocol will become bloated real fast.
Also idk how they want to implement this, but proper multi client e2ee is complicated as fuck. Are they going to store keys in the browser? How will it work with non official clients? How do keys get transferred between clients?
This is a hugely time intensive project and if you fuck it up, people will be more mad than if you just didnt do it.
It's less a technical problem than one of attracting bad actors, then law enforcement chasing the bad actors, warrants, subpoenas, seizures, that whole bit. Think of running a Tor exit oode. If that's what you want to do and you go into it wth your eyes open, then fine, but sleepwalking into it seems like something to avoid.
That really does sound like a bag of hurt.
But it also sounds like a fuller alternative to what the big guys offer. And in the long run it would make it a well rounded space and protocol.
It’s too bad that it sounds like it both isn’t straightforward to implement properly, and attracts heat.
I wish them luck. Privacy and security would be great. People do use these spaces as direct messaging platforms. Even if it’s not the best all around idea. As social spaces evolve, the way people message evolves too. Making it secure earlier in that cycle is good.
Lemmy (at least lemmy.world) has relatively little appetite for edgy content even compared to reddit. Look at the communities and instances that have been banned already.
It may be worthwhile to offer secure deletion of stored DM's after some interval, even if they are stored in the clear. I posted some code for that a long time ago. Maybe I can dust it off of rewrite it.
I just feel like the obvious choice is to build a system to seamlessly connect from activitypub to an existing secure messaging platform. Reinventing the wheel like this is just a waste of resources imo.