> encrypted messaging apps like Signal and Telegram
Telegram less of an "encrypted messaging app" than Instagram was (which, until May 8th, has optional E2EE apps using the Signal protocol). It's simply incorrect to think of Telegram as an "encrypted messaging app" when the default use case is not E2EE.
> the mishandling being a part of a evil plot to strengthen the surveillance state and promote fascism
DOGE strengthened the surveillance state. It does not matter whether or not it's tied to a singular intentional plot.
> Mass surveillance was already a problem back in 2013
Yes, and mass surveillance was a problem even before 2013. We saw it greatly expand especially under the Bush administration under the guise of the "war on terror". As you noted, we haven't seen Obama or Biden reform to account for expansions of power that happened under the preceding administrations. (Hopefully we can get another Watergate style realignment!) So, you have to think about the world in systems thinking, and you have to think about how the state of things are changing over time.
Musk endorsed Signal in 2021, but since then he's denigrated it as "vulnerable", promoted Telegram (which, again, is not even in the same ballpark), blocked Signal for a period and banned users for posting them, and has promoted XChat (which stores keys and metadata serverside and which does not even have forward secrecy).
Musk is a proponent of surveillance and censorship, not the other way around.
> Telegram less of an "encrypted messaging app" than Instagram was
Instagram is not comparable to Telegram. It is closed source, so there's no way to verify that it's doing E2EE.
> DOGE strengthened the surveillance state. It does not matter whether or not it's tied to a singular intentional plot.
That's not what you originally implied, but no matter. DOGE probably strengthened surveillance capacity within the government as a side effect of its auditing work, but I don't think it added any new capability to surveil citizens that the NSA did not already have.
As for Musk being a proponent of surveillance and censorship, there's a difference between an individual surveiling and censoring users on a platform he bought vs the government using mass surveillance and censorship against its citizens.
After Elon bought Twitter, he is like the Discord mod of his giant server, and doesn't want people to go to other servers. I don't think there's much more to it than that behind the ban of Signal links on X. He had previously banned other platforms' links on a whim as well [0]. He enforces his own rules on his own platform, but he's outspoken against government surveillance and censorship. He's somewhat hypocritical value-wise in this regard, which is one of his flaws, but he's also not the government. And even so, Twitter still manages to have looser speech restrictions nowadays than it did in 2021.
[0] https://www.theverge.com/2022/12/18/23515221/twitter-bans-li...