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Comment by sweis | Hacker News Reader

Hi. To move all messages to be E2E encrypted, we need credible solution for web clients and every other platform, including old feature phones. This is easier said than done, but is something we are thinking about.

Secret Conversations is a step in the right direction.

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I think people underestimate just how ludicrously hard it is to provide an encrypted experience that's as good as plaintext. Even showing a chat on multiple devices becomes a hard problem. I agree with you that it's a step in the right direction, and Viber and Whatsapp have a much easier problem to solve, given that both only support device-to-device messaging. The only app that supports multi-device chats that I know of is Silent Phone, but I admit to not being very up to date with the instant messaging landscape.

Signal handles sync between phone and desktop just fine.

http://Wire.com supports encrypted multi-device chats.

I'm building one. When you start with the idea that it's going to be encrypted and that you won't know what users are sending back and forth you have to make some concessions but functionally I don't think the average person would even know that my application is encrypted from a UX perspective. You need to handle abuse client-side, it requires a bit more thought but I'm sure that's not beyond Facebook.

"feature phones" sounds like newspeak. Why are they called that? If anything I'd think they'd be called "lack-of-feature-phones".

Feature phone is actually oldspeak. It's what we called cell phones with features back when most cell phones didn't have features. Then smartphones came along and reset the expectations for what features a phone has, leaving feature phones in the dust. But there was a time where feature phone meant something positive.

Because "phone" is the primary feature. Phone-feature phone sounds silly. You can say lack of features phone if you like, most people prefer shorter phrases.

Sold based on features, rather than sold for being based on a particular platform. That's what it means.

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