This topic was automatically opened after 41 hours.
Ah, the encryption discussion is open again! Canāt believe Iād missed it until it had gotten locked!
Itās a subject Iām incredibly passionate about, and in fact the timing right now is perfect, as Iām working on a research paper with the OU that touches on this subject, and these resources youāve shared will be useful citations to help me better frame some counter arguments as Iām far too biased in favour of E2EE and have yet to agree with a narrative used in argument against it.
Should the encryption discussion continue, Iāll hopefully get involved this time!
You need to get moderator permissions so that you can still have your say even when the topic has been locked
We are planning a Sphere discussion event on this very topic in the coming weeks, so weād love to see you there! We will be exploring both sides of the debate, so please feel free to attend once weāve posted details on it.
Look forward to the future updates @simonb
This post from Peter is spot on and if you want you can message me directly. Thereās been posts on the Topic which Simon has taken the time to reply to - which is great.
Simon isnāt just going to expect fully positive responses and heās actively seeking feedback but if we can make sure that we edge towards it being constructive then that would be greatly appreciated by all.
A reminder: this is not the place to discuss flags or to bring back topics of conversation that led to the topic being closed.
Thank you!
Maybe you could be more specifc about what we can talk about. Youāve deleted every single post for the last few days and keep closing this down, Iām at a loss now it seems unless weāre praising sphere the posts get deleted
As I am sure this is about to be deleted too
Iāll tackle a few of these for clarity, but Iām afraid this is for information rather than discussion:
The code of conduct is available to read. Stay within it and there will be no problems.
This is not true. I have removed one post which was about flagging rather than Sphere. I moved a bunch of off-topic posts about a different product (Potato IM) to a separate topic.
This is untrue. I donāt have a particularly strong view either way on Sphere. What is unacceptable is the conflation of critique of the product (which is understandable) with what the code of conduct calls āad homenem attacksā (which it defines as ācriticising a poster personallyā).
I hope the explanation above explained why it was closed. Let me quote my previous post where I tried to make that clear:
If anyone has any concerns about the way Iāve handled this, please speak to @AlanDoe privately. If you have concerns about moderation in general, you can always open a separate topic to discuss that (although accusations or concerns about specific individuals must always happen privately).
Theyāll be a full discussion soon over at Sphere, see what pros and cons this brings up.
I think I expect a messaging app to be E2EE if I have a choice to use it.
Teams/Zoom/Slack that you use at work, Iām not going to discuss anything that I wouldnāt care if my boss looks at. And I understand Slack are open with it for fear of workplace bullying etc. I have no problem with that, I know from the outset and I consider it the same as my work emails, at anytime these could be read by the company.
But Sphere doesnāt seem to want to be Slack. It wants to be a better WhatsApp, so youāre not going to āforceā me to use it (like in a work place) so Iāll likely pick something else that has better privacy protocols.
Iāve spun out a bunch of non Sphere related (but very interesting) posts on end to end encryption over here:
https://community.monzo.com/t/end-to-end-encryption-of-messaging-apps/114942
Letās keep Sphere specific stuff here, the general stuff over there!
This is all very fair - thank you for posting!
Where I think it can be challenged, is the existence (and popularity of) Discord. This is a service that people are not forced to use, they choose to use. This is a service that is not E2EE, because it is aimed at facilitating communities. One obvious example is that itās hard to facilitate a community when every new member canāt see anything posted from before they joined (which is what happens in an E2EE environment).
This is a closer comparison to what we are trying to build, even if right now, our positioning, messaging and even UX arenāt yet making that super clear - there are large projects happening in all of those areas currently, and at tonightās event, weāll be showing UI mockups that will begin to make this more clear.
You talk about integrating messaging and events a lot and compare Sphere to Discord. What if discord adds events to its platform?
If Discord is the baseline youāre setting yourself against here, have you not considered offering an E2EE alternative as a USP to entice people over? Instead of bringing more of the same?
I donāt use Discord, because itās not E2EE. My friends use it because thereās no real encrypted alternative. Itās much less a choice, and more of a Thereās nothing better and this is what everyone is using.
I can understand it to an extend, as it falls somewhere between an IM client and a discussion board. The former you expect privacy, the latter not so much. E2EE isnāt just about privacy though, itās security too.
I hope you guys remain open to discussion and feedback on this, and consider deeply about changing your stance, and seriously explore the possibility from a practical standpoint.
That would be incredible validation that people are seeing the same thing weāre seeing.
Absolutely - everything is up for discussion and debate all the time. I think thereās a world in which you have the public/community āchannelsā environments which are not E2EE for the purposes of facilitating community, but you also have DM elements (1 to 1) which are, because they donāt have the same issues (such as the one I identified about new users being unable to see previous discussion).
Itās not necessarily a binary issue, and it ultimately depends on the feature set. For example, itās hard to see how we could expand the events feature that we have in the way that we want to do (public facing pages that allow RSVPs from non-app users) and have it be E2EE, but thatās not necessarily the case with every feature we might build in the future.
The simplest answer is that we only came out of stealth at the end of 2020. Prior to December, we had no forum, no social media, no blog, no external comms at all. And quite a lot of our current direction was still being finalised conceptually, developed and built. Our two current Product Leads only joined in January, and have been pivotal in shaping this stuff.
Everything that I posted in this thread prior to December was pretty much the only information shared publicly - that and what was in the TechCrunch piece (which mostly just pulled from the App Store listing). And a lot of stuff inside the company was being reshaped at that time.
Iām personally committed to transparency, but at the same time, thereās a reason we are in private beta. Itās so that we get all our ducks in a row before a public/open launch. Previous thinking was that building in public is incompatible with being a private beta where a lot can and will change. I personally donāt believe that to be the case.