-
Notifications
You must be signed in to change notification settings - Fork 2.9k
Why client side encryption is a bad idea
###403 DO NOT MOVE###
We're currently moving this wiki over to our new project site. The contents of this page are not important enough to be ported over because they are either very old, very outdated or wrong and misleading.
Because this question comes up often recently I wrote up my thoughts. Feel free to contribute.
We would need to write a client that works on all operating systems. This would add another chunk of extra complexity besides the one we already have with federation.
As you would want to write such a client as browser extension you not only would need to support multiple operating systems but also multiple browsers and their versions. This can even lead to having to write the same thing 3 or more times or simply exclude many users because they've chosen the "wrong" browser.
The sign up barrier would be much higher. There are many people who fear "silly" stuff they don't understand yet, while just signing up somewhere is unproblematic for most people. Plus in your company, library, internet cafe etc. you're often just not allowed to install stuff and it might be not available or forbidden. This gets crucial if you think about advanced developing countries where not everybody can have a computer at home and which are often under repressive governments.
One thing that made many SNs successful is, in my experience, is to be able to easily look into it while you are not at your computer, without having to install or setup anything, simply by signing in. That you won't need to copy some keys or have to carry a device with you just to look at some photos with your friends. That you quickly can post a status update from your classmates phone in the break. And so on.
As a user of Diaspora you're more likely aware of your data. Which you mean you care about it. We want to build a feature that'll allow you to easily move from one pod to another. The effect is, as soon as it becomes public that company is exploiting the data of the users of its pod, they move away and the company is dead (in that sector). So the product shifts from you being the product to the Software being the product.
There's only one who knows all your data in Diaspora, and that's your pod maintainer. Which is possibly you.