Samuel
@samuel.fm
ok a few people have asked and I never answered because I knew I'd get a million quote posts (sorry), but here's the official stance on E2EE DMs tl;dr: 100% planned, but not right now in order to get the basic feature out there asap :)
Basic "Off-Protocol" Direct Messages (DMs): having some mechanism to privately contact other Bluesky accounts is the most requested product feature. We looked closely at alternatives like linking to external services, re-using an existing protocol like Matrix, or rushing out on-protocol encrypted DMs, but ultimately decided to launch a basic centralized system to take the time pressure off our team and make our user community happy. We intend to iterate and fully support E2EE DMs as part of atproto itself, without a centralized service, and will take the time to get the user experience, security, and privacy polished. This will be a distinct part of the protocol from the repository abstraction, which is only used for public content.
bryan newbold@bnewbold.net· 7 May 2024
atproto devs! got a new 2024 atproto roadmap posted. curious for your questions!
2024 Protocol Roadmap | Bluesky
Discuss this post in our Github Discussion forums here
docs.bsky.app
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Samuel
nice thing about this way around from the perspective of us appers is that we'll have already done the UI stuff, so E2EE will be easy peasy. cant say the same for the backend bois though lmao
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Mike Beasley
It’s asymmetric encryption, you don’t need the encryption font size to decrypt it. You decrypt it with a larger font size.
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Samuel
I think it’s because we use sensible languages that don’t capitalize their booleans
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Jon Millican
Hey there, this is exciting to hear! I'm Jon, from Meta's team who built E2EE for Messenger. If it would be at all helpful to talk over any considerations in the initial system design that might make the E2EE transition easier/harder in future, I'd be very happy to chat over some of our learnings!
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Metaflame
Gotta say, I really appreciate the amount of progress Bsky has been making, especially given the size of your team, and all while keeping the protocol decisions well-structured. Love the work y'all are doing! Related question - will E2EE DMs bring private accts/posts closer, or is that separate?
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Metaflame
Really looking forward to an in-protocol encryption/private-posting method for records, because that could unlock private accounts, circles/private group posts, and a lot more. Can't think of a clear way to do it with the current implementation, but I'm hoping there's space for that in ATProto!
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Andrew Rutherford
As much as not having encrypted DM's from the getgo sucks, this makes perfect sense, havign DM's sooner is rgeat. And if it all goes well, switching to e2ee DM's shouldn't be too much of a pain
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