[parhamn]

> There is no con to e2e, and many cons for snake oil/plaintext.

Is this true? From anecdata every e2e encrypted platform I used is much lower quality than the alternatives (iMessage, Signal, etc). Things like multi-device sync don’t work that well. Is this really just a coincidence? Telegram claims they can’t provide the same quality chat (and snappy cross platform crispness is really their competitive advantage) with e2e. Is this just a fake limitation?

[newscracker]

Technically, E2E increases the complexity of the applications and servers, but it shouldn't really affect quality of chats or messages. One area where this will be a problem is in search. Telegram claims that is can search chats faster because those are on its servers, and anecdotally, I have seen Telegram's search being better and faster than the other platforms I use or have tried (they have to search only on the local device, which then has an impact on battery life for phones and tablets).

The other bigger drawback with E2E is that the servers of those platforms don't store the chats permanently (they store it for about 30 days or so to deliver the messages to devices when they come online, depending on the platform). So syncing chat history across devices gets affected by this choice (it could still be done, but the complexity and speed of syncing grows a lot).

Wire does E2E for all chats and syncs all chats across devices. But it too doesn't sync chat history on newer linked devices. It also took the (what I consider as inferior) choice of using Electron for its desktop apps, which makes it quite sluggish.

[kitkat_new]

> he other bigger drawback with E2E is that the servers of those platforms don't store the chats permanently (they store it for about 30 days or so to deliver the messages to devices when they come online, depending on the platform).

Not true: Matrix is fine with storing messages permanently