[mort96]

But for a lot of purposes, encryption really isn't that important. Most friend groups isn't a group of journalists and their sources discussing state secrets. The privacy from end-to-end encryption is a nice-to-have, but I'm not even sure if it's worth the inherent inconvenience for most friend groups.

[goblin89]

How do friend groups deal with members who might want to drop a potentially controversial in future viewpoint, let alone a politically charged opinion?

Any use of a non-e2e service as a replacement for an e2e service basically means either self-censorship or recklessness. The data is not going away, and if context changes can implicate everyone involved.