Instagram messages on the web could pose an encryption challenge
0Reported today on The Verge
For the full article visit: https://www.theverge.com/interface/2020/1/15/21065596/instagram-direct-web-dms-encryption-security-stamos
Reported today in The Verge.
Instagram messages on the web could pose an encryption challenge
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It's a relatively slow week on the platforms-and-democracy beat, so let's talk about something small but fascinating in its own way: the arrival of Instagram messages on the web.
An unfortunate thing about being a xennial who grew up using (and loving) the world wide web is that most developers no longer build for it. Over the past 15 years, mobile phones became more popular than desktop computers ever were, and the result is that web development has entered a slow but seemingly inexorable decline. At the same time, like most journalists, I spent all day working on that same web. And with each passing year, the place where I do most of my work seems a little less vital.
This all feels particularly true when it comes to communications tools. Once, every messaging kingdom was united with a common API, allowing us to gather our conversations into a single place. (Shout out to Adium.) But today, our messages are often scattered across a dozen or more corporate inboxes, and accessing them typically requires picking up your phone and navigating to a separate app.
As a result, I spend a lot of time typing on a glass screen, where I am slow and typo-prone, rather than on a physical keyboard, where I'm lightning-quick. And each time I pick up my phone to respond to a message on WhatsApp, or Snapchat, or Signal, I inevitably find a notification for some other app, and the next thing I know 20 minutes have passed.
All of which is to say, I was extremely excited today to see Instagram's announcement that it had begun rolling out direct messages on the web. (The c