[vetinari]

This is not about default being certain function off.

This is about that one functionality being mutually exclusive with other functionality. If you enable E2EE, you disable cloud sync/history, multi-device use, message forwarding, etc. In normal use, users want the latter and if they need the secret chat, it is available.

In your example with Adblock Plus, there was no trade-off (to the user; there obviously was for the company). With Telegram, there is.

[fwn]

> This is about that one functionality being mutually exclusive with other functionality.

That is a design decision made by Telegram. My e2ee Signal and Matrix groups sync just fine across devices, preserve message history, allow message forwarding, etc.

Not enabeling those features is a nudge against using the e2ee-feature. Facebook Messenger does the same by crippling their encrypted chat experience.

The reason most people on WhatsApp enable unencrypted cloud backups is not because they really desire their message history to be leaked to Google/Apple but because they get occasionally nudged by a popup to enable it.

Those nudges work. It does not matter whether it's a good or a bad action they nudge to make one central assumption about them: settings should not be interpreted as user choice if the results aren't tested against complementary nudges.

[vetinari]

Signal does not sync across devices; they have per-device queue and the message is encrypted with each device keys. If your device doesn't pick the message from the queue on time (either before queue getting full, or expiring after ~60 days), you won't have that message on that specific device, ever. You also won't have older messages (before you enrolled the device) on it (that also means you won't have the old messages on your new phone, without transferring them or restoring from backup).

Signal does it relatively right; but the nuances are difficult to explain. Even here, on HN, it is difficult to explain the Telegram's tradeoffs, how would you explain that to common users?

[fwn]

That's interesting! I didn't know that.

> it is difficult to explain the Telegram's tradeoffs, how would you explain that to common users?

I think that serves as an additional indicator for the trade-off decision not being a conscious user choice.

I'm not sure many people would opt for unencrypted chat even if they fully understood those particular multi-device limitations you described.