# End-to-end Encryption for Chat **URL:** \ **Category:** Feature\ **Tags:** chat\ **Created:** [May 13, 2022, 6:50am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/end-to-end-encryption-for-chat/226932 "2022-05-13T06:50:24Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 4
**Author:** ![maiki](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/maiki/32/233950_2.png) [@maiki](https://meta.discourse.org/u/maiki)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2022, 2:03am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/end-to-end-encryption-for-chat/226932/4 "2022-05-14T02:03:58Z")
I would _love_ end-to-end encryption in real time chat! 🤩 But here’s the thing: encryption for private messages drastically reduces the uses for those messages. It isn’t always obvious at first. You can add and remove people from private messages, you can use them in your editorial workflow (I use them to capture notes, before sharing them more broadly!), all kinds of things. Encrypt them and suddenly a lot of what we can do is not longer appropriate, given the nature of the encryption involved. Okay, so now apply that to _real time chat_. Uh oh! We are suddenly going to lose a lot of not only what makes a chat **channel** interesting, but we’re also going to lose what makes _Discourse chat_ interesting: advanced features that are developing as we figure out how to integrate chat into the knowledge capture processes folks already use Discourse for; adding encryption to that will drastically reduce the usefulness of chat, in this case. I’m a supporter of encrypt-all-the-things! I use OMEMO for all my personal chats, on a server I control. But there are trade-offs, and they are not what I’d want to apply to Discourse Chat. What we’ve got is going to be something _very cool_ on its own. 🕶 Also, encrypted PMs are like, _already real time chat channels_, so there’s that! --- _[View the full topic](https://meta.discourse.org/t/end-to-end-encryption-for-chat/226932)._