alt Hacker NewsNo, saying that e2e encryption makes users _less_ safe is completely dishonest, nothing is fine about this.
The logic of "anything is better than before" is also fallacious.
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It makes certain users less safe in certain situations.
E2E makes political activists and anti-chinese dissidents safer, at the cost of making children less safe. Whether this is a worthwhile tradeoff is a political, not technical decision, but if we claim that there are any absolutes here, we just make sure that we'll never be taken seriously by anybody who matters.
well having no e2e encryption is safer than having a half-baked e2e encryption that have backdoor and can be decrypted by the provider.
and for tiktok's stance, I think they just don't want to get involved with the Chinese government related with encryption (and give false sense of privacy to user)
Depends on your definition of "safe". Imagine an adult DMs a nude photo to a minor (or other kinds of predation).
If it's E2EE, no one except the sender and receiver know about this conversation. You want an MITM in this case to detect/block such things or at least keep record of what's going on for a subpoena.
I agree that every messaging platform in the world shouldn't be MITM'd, but every messaging platform doesn't need to be E2EE'd either.