> Purely on the content of the article: Given that the messages are not stored encrypted locally and that this service is connected to the US, I do not see how it can be viable for the privacy-conscious.
Matrix chats (direct and group) are E2E by default. There is no bridge that will let you keep E2E encryption between Signal/WhatsApp and another service - it has to be broken somewhere. I believe Element is a UK company.
The blog post on This Week In Matrix states it uses modified versions of the open source (and self hostable) Mautrix bridges which are primarily built by tulir [2] of Beeper [3]: https://matrix.org/blog/category/this-week-in-matrix#element...
> However, in addition to being a fast, snappy Matrix account, it also comes with unlimited personal bridging to Whatsapp, Signal and Telegram thanks to mautrix-whatsapp/signal/telegram!