Why is this any better? It doesn't solve any of the identity and end-to-end encryption problems centralized messengers do; it just changes the underlying connectivity model, which is the least interesting part of the system.

> now every chat message

"It hurts when I do that."

"Don't do that."

I usually defend Siri, because I’m perfectly fine trading a little functionality for security. I prefer it that way.

building new features on top of E2EE is genuinely hard, and I've seen many companies struggle to keep innovating while staying strictly E2EE.

Having seen multiple leading messaging/VoIP stacks from inside, the amount of engineering spent to work around various limitations of E2EE in real prod scenarios is insane, and even for simple every-day-use features metrics don't compare to the metrics of the same feature running without E2EE.

Do you know what Zuckerberg said in an interview? I think it was to Lex Fridman but I could be wrong

"Apple hasn't come up with anything new in 20 years"

Very likely in response to Apple's granularity. Poor Zuck can't steal people's credentials

Apple feels like the only big tech company that remotely cares about its users. Thank god they make the best computer and OS too.

I’m sure this will not be a popular take on HN however.

Privacy is the reason I’m still on team Apple.

They were kinda forced to in the name of "think of the children". The New Mexico case that's been going on at the moment.

thats a generous view. The dystopian fascist view is he's aligning with the surveillance state's interests and instagram is seen as a breeding ground for anti-american-american activities.

People are bozos for wanting more from a glorified egg timer. I like Siri myself.

It's not just "the death of the open web".

These decisions are made whilst America is falling to fascism. Meta may not intend for the abolition of E2E encryption to make fascist crackdown on free speech easier, but that is the reality of what abolishing E2E encryption does.

DHS is already subpoenaing tech companies for the information about users who criticize ICE. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/technology/dhs-anti-ice-s...

The "walled garden" isn't even that big a concern anymore. The gestapo reading every single digital communication you have and showing up to harass, threaten, or simply disappear you into a camp if the infraction is severe enough. That is what's at stake here.

Do people expect that Instagram can't read their Instagram private messages? I don't think people expect that. And E2EE is not nearly as cheap as the HN crowd likes to pretend—how do those devices get those keys if not through a central service? Especially if one of them is a web browser?

This is awful. They are doing this so they can literally advertise to kids. I bet their dbs aren't encrypted at rest either. Complete foolishnes

I'm not sure I disagree, but I would summarise it slightly differently.

If you don't want Mark Zuckerberg to upload your private messages into his own chat AI, then stop using Instagram immediately.

Actually, by doing e2e encryption, Meta can say to the authorities that Meta doesn't see any message and cannot be blamed for anything. We cannot snoop user's conversation, and that's generally a good thing.

The authority holds Meta responsible anyway; they don't care about the implementation detail. They want to catch a pedo, and Meta is unable to produce evidence that helps them. Everyone else will yell at Meta for helping pedos.

You can substitute "pedo" with any other heinous crime e.g. terrorism.

And this is how we arrive at the current situation.

> but end to end encryption on instagram is only protecting your chats from Meta.

No. It protects your chats from Meta and all governments of the countries where Meta operates.

In fact, I expect Instagram to be more reachable globally now because these relaxed communication standards would be welcomed by oppressive governments as they can now retrieve messages as they please for whatever purpose they deem.

the entire point of encryption is that you don't trust the channel you communicate through, that's what it was invented for, communication across adversarial channels. Distrust is the only condition under which you need encryption.

In addition from a practical POV it's if anything the reverse is the case. Email encryption is larp security because plain text is the default, leaks metadata and its interfaces make it trivial for people to leak entire conversations. If there's one technology where you should just assume your messages are public, it's email before someone copy pastes or wrongly forwards your encrypted communication to fifty other people.

Private message encryption makes sense because it's now a default, information exchanged is usually personal, and the problem isn't just Meta but law enforcement extorting your data out of their hands, which encryption in the real world has prevented a few times now already.

I don't know all the details because I'm not a cryptologist, but Wire messenger seemed to have solved this in a way that wasn't annoying. I haven't used it since they pivoted, so can't speak much to its implementation, but I remember it working seamlessly across devices.

Do users expect that Instagram can't read their Instagram chats?

I think people feel this is the begining of the end.

Meta is part of the reason Signals E2EE spread and E2EE became ubiquitous in general.

Many governments have also turned against E2EE and I suspect it's gone from a shield where you can say we can't really help you get that data, to a constant pressure.