Do you really see most people leaving the likes of Facebook, Instagram and Twitter? I don't think they care about privacy enough to stop doing what's easy and fun
People have been leaving Facebook in droves. Hardly any of the original users use the platform regularly. Facebook has only remained relevant by buying relevant platforms as they start to take off. Companies that declines an offer or regulation to prevent this buy up behavior is what it takes. Social networks have no monetary buy in to discourage switching the moment your friends aren't on the platform any longer
You might get this impression if your main source of news is HN, but Facebook's monthly traffic among North American users has been steadily climbing quarter after quarter, year after year. Globally, it's up 8% YoY.
...and they've been flocking to Instagram (also Facebook is still huuuuge)
Companies that are willing to play dirty are the ones that get investment and also are the ones who retain users. They have an inherent advantage over any platform that tries to be moral -- or alternatively platforms that try to be moral have an inherent disadvantage. As long as privacy and respectful user experience is on the bottom of the list of priorities of most users they are the ones who will be able to build momentum, and I can't imagine what could happen to change that.
I like Telegram, but I‘m not sure it is the prime candidate for privacy / secure communication. Hopefully Matrix gains traction. Element is getting better but is still full of bugs...
I couldn't see Matrix in the play store, the web page is unusable: I wanted to try it, not ,,learn more''.
I installed Element, but it required username/password pair. I understand that it's a bit more secure than using phone number+email for first authentication, but it makes discovery of friends too hard. It trades too much UX for security, just like PGP.
I've not tried installing Element, but I imagine the app could gain the feature of automatically generating a password for you. Asking a user to select a username when joining a chat network seems like a reasonable UX, although having to pick a server is an extra burden.
Perhaps the creators of the app could partner with some big providers to allow the app to try creating your account on one of these providers at random (and keep trying different providers if your intended name is already taken on one that it tries).
I also agree with you about discovery of friends being hard unless users provide their phone numbers to a central server, so perhaps there should be an option for that when creating your account. This central database could run by an independent, audited, third party service. I'm not sure who could be trusted in that role (perhaps Let's Encrypt?), or how much it would cost, but it's an interesting thought experiment.
Email is used for historical reasons, it wouldn't be good enough as a new service. If it disappeared, everybody would be just using Facebook for authentication / connecting with services.
Are you willing to cut yourself off completely from that 90%? Given current policies that third parties have no duty to protect and even a duty to provide their data to law enforcement, you can care about privacy all you want but if every person in your circle isn't just as vigilant you are still screwed. Once one person in your circle leaks data or metadata about you to a privacy unfriendly third party, you've lost the game.
