You'll love this!

I deployed an open-source chat system at work, just for convenience. Boss was concerned that it didn't do any logging and we couldn't tell who said what.

"You don't have any records of what we say verbally. What's the difference?"

"...Oh. Well, you're right."

He was coming from a legit concern. We didn't point fingers when someone screwed up, zero blame, but we needed to know exactly what happened so we could fix it.

I think its a mixture of lazy and inexperience.

I believe if someone in a position of authority who understands how vital E2EE is in order for the internet to work, this suggestion wouldn't even be on the table.

its a case of just kicking destroying E2EE down the road for another generation to deal with, I believe. not sure what the solution is, either

They cut costs by firing the people doing the legwork and passed the savings along to billionaires who promised sustainable models. Now they can't hire people to do real legwork anymore because, "no one wants to work anymore for their grandparents' wage in an economy and society designed to turn people into voluntary slaves and the only way to escape is to become homeless and go off the grid, but the laws are being molded to prevent anyone from escaping the system."

I'm pretty sure that's how the old adage goes.

That they can is what has changed. They didn't have sufficient information to put pressure.

They still had microphones and inquiry drugs, including those causing memory loss. So they knew plenty of what people were saying to each other.

Anyway. Everything has changed a lot, not just technology, and one can't really make a chain of causation to all this. There are plenty of feedback loops.

The rules now are "we are stronger, so we are forbidding everything we don't want". Losing leverage does that.

Until you learn of some way to hit them back, such questions are no good, because not answering them doesn't cost anything.