[rattray]

> public messages are public anyways

Right, but someone I trust could have their message corrupted, no?

eg; some political leader intends to write "everybody vote for Alice" and it is modified to read "everybody vote for Carol". Is this possible?

(I generally trust FB not to do this because their business would suffer if they were caught, for example – not so with ephemeral pubs)

[cel]

Each message includes a signature by its author of its content, so it can't be falsified (unless the author's key is compromised)

[yoshuaw]

Nope, there's proper crypto in place to prevent this (each user has their messages signed with a keypair)