&gt; Slack isn&#x27;t encrypted and it doesn&#x27;t make sense to pretend that it is.<p>I didn&#x27;t say it was.<p>&gt; But anyway, email can support encryption if you want it, not by one, but two protocols. Email is actually the main channel that journalists and businesses are using for communicating actual secrets over the wire.<p>Yes, but they&#x27;re using GPG over email. Another example of a nesting protocols approach are plugins that support OTR over XMPP. Nesting protocols is a valid approach for technical users, but the user experience is such that it will never catch on with non-technical users. And, in context, <i>providing e2e encryption that non-technical users will use</i> is a big part of moxie&#x27;s goals.<p>S&#x2F;MIME can&#x27;t be deployed meaningfully because major webmail providers will never support it; data-mining email is a huge part of their business model.<p>So no, email does not support encryption.<p>&gt;  And the reason for why encryption isn&#x27;t popular with email is because people don&#x27;t freaking care.<p>Nobody cares about encryption in the abstract, but a great many people care about privacy. Many people who care about privacy simply don&#x27;t have the technical knowledge to know what encryption they need and use it, and can&#x27;t give up the communication that email&#x2F;chat&#x2F;etc give them. My dad, who has trouble bolding text in Word, learned how to use Signal because he cares about encryption.