The Verge: “As Elon Musk and President Donald Trump have sought to gut and remake the federal government to their liking, federal workers have changed how they communicate with one another and with friends. They have locked down communication channels, migrated to new platforms, and what was once skepticism has grown into deep distrust — not just of their boss’s boss’s boss, but of the very services they use to communicate with one another, worried that their messages will be leaked to the government. Multiple federal workers who spoke to The Verge on the condition of anonymity said they’ve moved sensitive conversations from text messages and Facebook Messenger to the encrypted messaging app Signal. Many are downloading and using Signal for the first time to communicate with each other — away from the eyes of Trump and Musk loyalists but also from mainstream tech companies. For some, everything but the most innocuous conversations have been moved. Photos of pets might stay on typical channels; almost everything else is on Signal…At the heart of some of the distrust is how technology companies have cozied up to the Trump administration: companies including Meta, Google, and Apple’s Tim Cook all donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund. For months, Mark Zuckerberg has laid it on thick in an attempt to curry favor with the administration, flattering Trump publicly and preaching the right-wing gospel on podcasts. One worker also pointed to a recent change made by Google to its calendar of holidays that removed celebrations like Pride Month and Black History Month. (A Google spokesperson told The Verge the calendar was switched to display only default entries for public holidays and national observances.) Privacy experts have long raised concerns about how data held by technology companies could be used against users on the platform. In 2022, in response to a police search warrant, Meta turned over unencrypted chat logs in which two women discussed abortion pills in a state in which abortion access was restricted…”