Hacker News Reader

Comment by amadeuspagel | Hacker News Reader

Glad to see that americans finally get end-to-end encrypted messaging between iPhone and android users, something that the entire world has had since 2016: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/06/technology/whatsapp-messa...

View on HN

Don't know what your definition of "world" is, but people in China (that's 1.3b people) don't have access to WhatsApp, and the "default" chat app WeChat is monitored by the police at all time. So maybe you want to be a bit more accurate with wording.

The US had that option as well, we just chose not to use it as the default standard like some other counties.

For me, I had iMessage which is end-to-end encrypted, and I can count on one hand the number of texts I send to non-iPhone users in a year. There was no value to changing, and no need to try and convince everyone I know to switch to a different messaging service.

And with Facebook owning WhatsApp, even with end-to-end encryption, there are trust issues there. I had WhatsApp on my phone from a trip to India. About a dozen of my friends in the US showed up in there, but we never used it to talk. Once Facebook bought it, I deleted the app, and nothing of value was lost.

If I really wanted secure messaging with someone I talk to often on Android, I’d opt for Signal over WhatsApp.

The ability to have end-to-end encrypted chats with people using different operating systems is something valuable and companies that offer that are more trustworthy then companies that don't.

We've had encrypted messaging longer than that; TextSecure launched in 2011.

I think they meant in the context of mass adoption.

I never heard of TextSecure.

> I never heard of TextSecure.

Signal before it rebranded.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com