The issue came down to ease of usability. PGP simply wasn’t plug-and-play, hell it wasn’t even easy to set up. And most importantly, it absolutely depended on the other person having the same configuration.

As messaging platforms like Signal has shown, security and encryption needs to be transparent and unnoticeable. It needs to be totally frictionless and thinking-free in order for the average Joe to want to use it.

And that is even before other issues such as platform stickiness, which Signal has issues with.