> But it’s still a big step up and would mean that if Facebook suddenly decided merely blocking forwarding isn’t enough to fight “rumors” or “fake news”, they’d

> But it’s still a big step up and would mean that if Facebook suddenly decided merely blocking forwarding isn’t enough to fight “rumors” or “fake news”, they’d be stopped by the auditors who’d (hopefully) refuse to sign the update that takes out the encryption. A central auditor, or a bunch of auditors that verify what updates are doing, and work out if they are changing functionality of the protocol? I mean that's never going to happen. Writing the constitution/contract for that is pretty hard, not to mention the cost. Plus all of this assumes that users will read the information provided (they wont) Then there is the verification of trust for the auditors, which is difficult. I do notice that the author makes a bold claim to say that the signal protocol doesn't work, as a way of attacking moxie (fair enough) but then goes on outline the problems with whatsapp. Now, Signal inc were contracted by whatsapp to add e2e on whatsapps "improved" XMPP. The claim appears to refer to this: > In 2019 WhatsApp imposed forwarding limits on messages in order to “slow down the spread of rumors, viral messages, and fake news”. This represents a total defeat of the Signal protocol’s cryptographic objectives. I mean that's not really the case, Adding client side limits to stop forwarding isn't a defeat of encryption. Its a limit of freedom of speech, perhaps, but not encryption. but more importantly the author appears to deliberately conflate the software company with the signal protocol