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> I hope that with enough traction and some investment, I'll be able to hire an expert to help add privacy features that I can advertise in good faith. Now is

> I hope that with enough traction and some investment, I'll be able to hire an expert to help add privacy features that I can advertise in good faith. Now is a really good time to learn. Seriously. libsodium is an excellent example of a library which provides user-friendly APIs that don't require you to roll your own crypto and is very strongly audited by experts — see https://libsodium.gitbook.io/doc/public-key_cryptography/authenticated_encryption https://libsodium.gitbook.io/doc/public-key_cryptography/aut... for an illustration. There are lots of other similarly good libraries. All you need to do is to implement some public key infrastructure, making sure that private keys stay private and never leave the user's device and that you can look up the published public key of another user.

ajkjk 5y ago
Or they could just not do it because it's not that important to most people... HN comment sections are not representative of the general populace.
- neilalexander 5y ago
  Do you know this with reasonable certainty or are you assuming this to be the case? Either way, it’s arguably better to design defensively and build in better security than you think you will need up front rather than have worse security and be in the headlines for the wrong reasons later.
  - ajkjk 5y ago
    I'm assuming it, and I'm certain my assumption is right. 99% of people have no idea what encryption is, so there's no way they could care about it. So while I'm not "utterly certain", all anyone would have to do to be as certain as me is go ask, like, five people who aren't engineers about it.
- spacebear 5y ago
  I don't think this is true anymore. The average user may not know what end-to-end encryption is, but they know they don't trust Facebook. And Apple built a whole marketing campaign around user privacy. I think most people do care about privacy, but they're usually powerless to defend it.
  - dmitryminkovsky 5y ago
    Yeah I think you are right, more and more people are becoming very sensitive to this, and I am, too, personally. But as I wrote in a parent comment, I'd rather get it right later than wrong now. It's a big thing to misrepresent.
  - ajkjk 5y ago
    The average Facebook user.. does... trust Facebook, enough to use it. That's why Facebook is a multi-billion-dollar company. Seriously, sometimes I wonder if people on this site have ever interacted with people outside of tech.
spacebear 5y ago
Yes! Strongly agree with this. E2E is easier than you think and will be much harder to add after the fact.
dmitryminkovsky 5y ago
I just kind of think that encryption is one of those things that's best done by people who really know a lot about it. Like, I think it's okay to program if you don't know everything about data structures and algorithms, but I do not think it's okay to represent like your app is cryptographic secure when you're not extremely experienced and well versed in the field. Even if you're not rolling your own crypto but using someone else's. The extent to while I'm comfortable using someone else's crypto is LetsEncrypt with an integration for the K8s nginx ingress controller. But I will not personally warrant/represent that my at-rest or E2EE solution is sound. I would be uncomfortable with that.

ajkjk 5y ago

Or they could just not do it because it's not that important to most people... HN comment sections are not representative of the general populace.

neilalexander 5y ago
Do you know this with reasonable certainty or are you assuming this to be the case? Either way, it’s arguably better to design defensively and build in better security than you think you will need up front rather than have worse security and be in the headlines for the wrong reasons later.
- ajkjk 5y ago
  I'm assuming it, and I'm certain my assumption is right. 99% of people have no idea what encryption is, so there's no way they could care about it. So while I'm not "utterly certain", all anyone would have to do to be as certain as me is go ask, like, five people who aren't engineers about it.
spacebear 5y ago
I don't think this is true anymore. The average user may not know what end-to-end encryption is, but they know they don't trust Facebook. And Apple built a whole marketing campaign around user privacy. I think most people do care about privacy, but they're usually powerless to defend it.
- dmitryminkovsky 5y ago
  Yeah I think you are right, more and more people are becoming very sensitive to this, and I am, too, personally. But as I wrote in a parent comment, I'd rather get it right later than wrong now. It's a big thing to misrepresent.
- ajkjk 5y ago
  The average Facebook user.. does... trust Facebook, enough to use it. That's why Facebook is a multi-billion-dollar company. Seriously, sometimes I wonder if people on this site have ever interacted with people outside of tech.

spacebear 5y ago

Yes! Strongly agree with this. E2E is easier than you think and will be much harder to add after the fact.

dmitryminkovsky 5y ago

I just kind of think that encryption is one of those things that's best done by people who really know a lot about it. Like, I think it's okay to program if you don't know everything about data structures and algorithms, but I do not think it's okay to represent like your app is cryptographic secure when you're not extremely experienced and well versed in the field. Even if you're not rolling your own crypto but using someone else's. The extent to while I'm comfortable using someone else's crypto is LetsEncrypt with an integration for the K8s nginx ingress controller. But I will not personally warrant/represent that my at-rest or E2EE solution is sound. I would be uncomfortable with that.