Facebook, now Meta, has noted that it will not roll out end-to-end encryption for Facebook and Instagram apps until 2023.
Last year, Facebook enabled cross messaging with Instagram.
Facebook, now Meta, has announced that it would not implement end-to-end encryption for Facebook and Instagram apps until 2023, citing concerns about child safety. Previously, the IT giant stated that end-to-end encryption will be available by 2022. Meta wants to make certain that end-to-end encryption does not prevent it from assisting in the investigation of illicit acts on its platforms. According to The Guardian, Meta will be able to detect abuse on its platforms using non-encrypted data, account information, and user reports under its new encryption plans, a strategy that WhatsApp already uses.
“We’re taking our time to get this right and we don’t plan to finish the global rollout of end-to-end encryption by default across all our messaging services until sometime in 2023. As a company that connects billions of people around the world and has built industry-leading technology, we’re determined to protect people’s private communications and keep people safe online,” Meta’s head of safety Antigone Davis was quoted as saying by Sunday Telegraph.
“People expect their private communications to be secure and to only be seen by the people they’ve sent them to not hackers, criminals, overreaching governments or even the people operating the services they’re using,” Facebook CEO Zuckerberg had noted in 2019.
The issue also pertains to Ofcom, the communications regulator in charge of executing the internet safety law, which will go into force in the United Kingdom in 2023 and compels tech companies to protect minors from harmful content and to prevent abuse on their platforms. Melanie Dawes, Ofcom’s chief executive, told the New York Times on Saturday that adults should be banned from sending direct messages to minors or face criminal prosecution. Users on Instagram and Facebook may activate disappearing messages in vanish mode. Messages sent in vanish mode are encrypted and vanish after the end of the chat.
