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Every few months, there's a claim that WhatsApp is spying on us! Telegram too! X Chat is better! Signal is the best! I'm not going to join that debate today.
The truth is, they are all encrypted and have their own takes on privacy and security. But they all require the same thing: Trust me.
I believe the future requires this one line to change to "Don't trust me." The future requires decentralization if we ever want to actually have a shot at private communication.
For a long time, privacy meant one thing: no one could read your messages.
We built encryption. Quantum-resistant encryption.
Stronger keys.
Better math. Harder locks.
And it worked... until the world changed.
Now the problem isn’t reading messages.
It’s knowing they’re all you. Stitching them together. What it remembers.
AI doesn’t need to break encryption.
It just needs to watch.
It sees the screen.
It remembers everything.
It links who you are at work, at home, with friends, with strangers.
Same you. Everywhere.
At the same time, our “secure” systems quietly grew a kill switch.
- One company.
- One country.
- One server rack.
Flip it off, and privacy disappears. Not because the math failed, but because the system did. Every major messenger relies on our trusting a private server run by a single organization. What good is quantum encryption if a country can shut down one’s servers; a company has a key to the private server; or even if a company has a private server?
That’s when it clicked:
Encryption protects messages.
It doesn’t protect existence.
And identity... global, permanent, reusable identity, became the weakest link of all.
If the same version of you shows up everywhere, privacy is already gone. If one app owns your conversations, they’re fragile by design.
If one server can be turned off, it eventually will be.
So the future of private communication has to change.
- Not better apps.
- Not louder promises.
- Not “trust us.”
A different foundation:
- systems that can’t be shut down (no private servers)
- new identities by default (users own keys, not apps, don't require a phone number or single username to use)
- conversations that don’t connect with each other (cryptographically impossible to track any data or users between conversations)
- memory that only exists when you choose it (you always control how you show up, defaults to nothing)
Different versions of you. Different rooms. Clean slates. We must decentralize our communication to secure it. And build new apps that give us control over how we show up.
This is just scratching the surface of what's to come and what's needed to protect us. The job of privacy and security is never done, and we will keep working to improve it every day.
That's what we've been building with XMTP & Convos. Come build with us. We're hiring.
Read more about the security and decentralization of XMTP.
