alt Hacker NewsI'm not sure if this meets the bar for substantive and thoughtful discussion, but this kind of corporate cowardice, enforced by unelected bureaucrats standing at the bully pulpit is only going to get worse as the noose tightens on the open web.
The combination of hardware attestation and walled garden "app stores" is the end goal of most policymakers in this area, and it happens to suit the monopolists in Google and Apple and Facebook down to the ground.
Perhaps a timely reminder that things do not always get better over time, and that we may have lived past the high point of secure communications in our lifetime.
Replies
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?
Hardware attestation really sounds like one of the worst things that could've happened to computers.