I sort of have this feeling that, if end-to-end encryption is going to be a standard requirement of the users in the near future, the big software companies won't know how to resolve this conflict of interest. They can't offer e2e at the same time that they try to extract value from the conversation channel. It's the same reason that Google is not really interested in promoting PGP on Gmail.

Which means that it won't matter which channel people are using to talk to each other, they will have to find a way to be a conversation point on each other's channels - e.g, Have a Google Bot on Facebook Messenger and Whatsapp and Skype and Telegram, and the others doing the same. By that point, the whole thing gets unbelievably stupid, and it will be better for everyone to just give up on building the walled gardens and go back to networks based on interoperable, federated open standards.

I made a "ask HN" [1] post because I am involved in this space, and I wonder if people here would be willing to put up with the loss of privacy or if they would be willing to pay for a chat service. I would appreciate if people could share some thoughts.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12553221