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I’m a staunch proponent of “if someone misunderstood you, it’s your fault for communicating badly” but I can’t fault Matrix here. What happened is not “Matrix
by fwlr 3y ago
I’m a staunch proponent of “if someone misunderstood you, it’s your fault for communicating badly” but I can’t fault Matrix here.
What happened is not “Matrix accidentally made it sound like they sell your message history to governments”. Instead, what happened is “Matrix said they enter business contracts with governments to sell services that they offer for free to citizens”.
The impression that message history was somehow being sold only arose as a last-ditch Hail Mary attempt to provide some theory, however unlikely, for making sense of how anyone could get that mad about that. It was not proposed by anyone who’s mad at Matrix, it was proposed by outside observers (who are not themselves mad at Matrix) who can’t otherwise understand how anyone could be mad at Matrix.
The missing piece of information is that there are people mad at Matrix in roughly the same sort of way that there are people mad at Dunkin Donuts for selling donuts to cops. (Arguably there is some more principled take, that government employees don’t have the right to unbreakably encrypt communication, since it might be communication done in the line of work and should therefore be transparent in case of corruption. To be clear, I don’t see that particular principled position being voiced, and I am not taking a stance on that position either way.)
- teawrecks 3y agoIMO it's not a police-level decision whether they use encrypted communication, or how that communication is handled down the line. Like you said, Element is Dunkin' Donuts; if you don't want your cops eating donuts, petition your local police dept to enforce that. DD just sells donuts, they're not activists. On the bright side, DD doesn't exclusively own the concept of donuts, and if someone doesn't like DD's policy of servicing everyone equally, they are able to go down the street and buy their donuts elsewhere. The analogy kinda breaks down when you consider the added detail that, in this case, "donuts" only exist because of the R&D that Dunkin' Donuts was able to fund by selling them to big buyers like police.
- D13Fd 3y agoMy natural reading of the statement was that “we sell our customers’ encrypted messaging to police and governments.” I feel like that is the most natural reading, and the alternative — that “we sell our encrypted messaging service to police and governments” - just elicits a giant “so what?” in my opinion.
- fwlr 3y agoI would argue the alternative reading is by far the most likely, but the (natural, correct) reaction of “so what?” combined with “this has been brought to my attention as important / it must be important because it’s at the top of hacker news” means the obvious and boring but accurate interpretation gets put aside, in favor of the most plausible explanation that justifies it being Big News (that they’re selling access to encrypted message history to governments). The missing piece of info that integrates all the other information is that some people are ~always mad at police and government.