#mastondon Friends!

@scottjenson @jarango it feels like there is an overlap between microblogging and private messages.

Sometimes the microblog topic opens up a conversation that you would like to follow up in private.

At the moment you need to switch service which adds friction.

But I get your point in not wanting to build another messaging app when there are good ones like Jami.net, Signal, XMPP, etc.

Have you thought about linking messaging accounts to reduce friction?

#mastondon Friends!

There is a TON of improvements we could make to Private Mentions (often called DMs on other platforms) e.g.
* getting them out of the public timeline
* Having a stronger notification tied to the Private Mention tab
* (amount other things)

But here is my MAIN question: How critical is it that these message are encrypted? I'm not against encryption! It's just complex and will take time. If we were to make some UX changes as a first pass WITHOUT encryption would you be OK with that (at least for now?)

If you MUST have encryption, that's fine, please do me the favor of replying explaining why you need it.

@scottjenson Interesting, seeing how other protocols got burned by adding encryption as an afterthought (XMPP, MAIL) I think we are still very very far away from having something comprehensive, reliable and usable. Unless that's a reality I'd shy away from promoting it unnecessarily loud. ‍️

Encryption rocks though. I hope that FEP has lots of traction.

@scottjenson Adding a vote for encryption first. For the simple reason that “personal message" is associated with a modicum of privacy. And the current Mastodon implementation does not provide much privacy at all for personal messages. As welcome as UX changes are, they would not change the underlying architectural issue, and might even increase the _appearance_ of those messages providing any actual meaningful privacy.

Let me know if you find that explanation needs more details.

@themipper @scottjenson we've been through this before. In the early days, Twitter DMs were specified by typing `d username` and then the text. As you may imagine, this led to several spectacular privacy fails.

IMO we know enough at this point to say private messages should be completely separate from the public timeline. They are different contexts that should be kept separate because the consequences of a mix up could be disastrous.

@octothorpe Thank you! To be clear, I'm not against adding encryption to Mastodon but it would be rather different than what you get with Signal. Here is a simple example. Many people are quite public with their real name here on mastodon, that makes sense. But if you REALLY wanted to use an encrypted message you ikely wouldn't want to use your public name. So in many ways, encrypted messages by you very little (well,in some situations)

That's kind of my point, I don't think people really see the FULL JOURNEY necessary for encryption.

However, many have said "I just don't want to have to trust my admin. I just need it for privacy" and you know, that's a perfectly good reason and to be fair, has NOTHING to do with competing with Signal.

That's all I'm trying to do here, understand how and why it would be used.

@mray But now you know why I'm asking. There is lots of energy around encryption but it's a very tricky thing to be done right. My point was simply that we start with some simple UX improvements and not wait for the encryption (given we already have private messages)

#mastondon Friends!

There is a TON of improvements we could make to Private Mentions (often called DMs on other platforms) e.g.
* getting them out of the public timeline
* Having a stronger notification tied to the Private Mention tab
* (amount other things)

But here is my MAIN question: How critical is it that these message are encrypted? I'm not against encryption! It's just complex and will take time. If we were to make some UX changes as a first pass WITHOUT encryption would you be OK with that (at least for now?)

If you MUST have encryption, that's fine, please do me the favor of replying explaining why you need it.

@scottjenson I was actually just thinking about why private mentions are even needed when there are other options like email for private and sensitive discussions between folks. I guess I never truly understand why they are needed in a public social network in the first place? Just leftover from Twitter precedent?

@scottjenson one huge problem with private mentions is that they actually aren't equivalent to DMs... because if you try to talk about another person and link to their profile, you effectively "mention" them and they can see the message. I don't know of any other DM that works this way and the UX is extremely confusing to users and just wrong IMO.

I think private mentions should be scrapped entirely and reworked as a different AP object type than Note so that they are treated differently.

@scottjenson I'm pessimistic up to the point where you have to have to assume it will fail completely. Just as XMPP and MAIL failed.

The only encryption implementation with success were the approaches where the UX can be controlled centrally.

For MAIL there is #autocrypt now, it is astonishing how good it is – but email is still not encypted today.

XMPP/Jabber has OMEMO, but stillt struggles with client adoption and it isn't omnipresent.

Where it worked: #DeltaChat and #Signal both using a central library that can make sure encryption reliably lands at peoples fingertips.

#mastondon Friends!

There is a TON of improvements we could make to Private Mentions (often called DMs on other platforms) e.g.
* getting them out of the public timeline
* Having a stronger notification tied to the Private Mention tab
* (amount other things)

But here is my MAIN question: How critical is it that these message are encrypted? I'm not against encryption! It's just complex and will take time. If we were to make some UX changes as a first pass WITHOUT encryption would you be OK with that (at least for now?)

If you MUST have encryption, that's fine, please do me the favor of replying explaining why you need it.

@mray But now you know why I'm asking. There is lots of energy around encryption but it's a very tricky thing to be done right. My point was simply that we start with some simple UX improvements and not wait for the encryption (given we already have private messages)

@phillycodehound @scottjenson I was going to say that I pretty much feel the same, but on the other hand, Bluesky *kind of* has this feature now already?

https://techcrunch.com/2026/02/18/a-startup-called-germ-becomes-the-first-private-messenger-that-launches-directly-from-blueskys-app/

Maybe something like this would work here as well rather than built-in?

sort of-- bsky is just verifying/confirming a self-attested Germ identifier. and no android yet, so only half of bsky users in the US and far less outside US.
@stefan @phillycodehound @scottjenson

#mastondon Friends!

There is a TON of improvements we could make to Private Mentions (often called DMs on other platforms) e.g.
* getting them out of the public timeline
* Having a stronger notification tied to the Private Mention tab
* (amount other things)

But here is my MAIN question: How critical is it that these message are encrypted? I'm not against encryption! It's just complex and will take time. If we were to make some UX changes as a first pass WITHOUT encryption would you be OK with that (at least for now?)

If you MUST have encryption, that's fine, please do me the favor of replying explaining why you need it.

@scottjenson @phillycodehound Maybe there are, but that's where everyone I would want to communicate with are.

#mastondon Friends!

There is a TON of improvements we could make to Private Mentions (often called DMs on other platforms) e.g.
* getting them out of the public timeline
* Having a stronger notification tied to the Private Mention tab
* (amount other things)

But here is my MAIN question: How critical is it that these message are encrypted? I'm not against encryption! It's just complex and will take time. If we were to make some UX changes as a first pass WITHOUT encryption would you be OK with that (at least for now?)

If you MUST have encryption, that's fine, please do me the favor of replying explaining why you need it.

@scottjenson I am kind of surprised that no one has mentioned that "oh the admins of the servers shouldnt see my DMs!" Creates a moderation nightmare and a harassment loophole that really shouldnt be considered worth the hassle. I am on team "just use signal" because if you need to have a really private conversation with someone who didnt give you their private contact information, no you dont.