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by traderj0e 37 days ago
In practice it's possible to make a system that's hard to mitm if users are diligent. WhatsApp publishes a public record of hashes of the keys. If both sides check that record against their local keys, it's hard for WhatsApp to present different versions to each. Though that's a more recent development.

The harder part that Instagram is most likely concerned about is getting low-effort users to keep their private keys safe without losing them.