The Danger Behind Meta’s Decision To Kill End-to-End Encrypted Instagram DMs

You might have missed it, but earlier this month,

Meta quietly announced that it intends to kill off

end-to-end encryption from Instagram chat by May 8th.

Researchers and experts tell WIRED

that this could create a dangerous precedent

for user privacy in big tech.

Meta spent the better part of a decade

working to deploy end-to-end encryption by default

across all of its chat apps,

a saga fraught with technical and political hurdles.

In 2019, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg laid out his vision

for privacy and security across the company's properties,

writing, We've repeatedly shown that we can evolve

to build the services that people really want,

including in private messaging and stories.

In December 2023, Meta declared victory,

announcing default end-to-end encryption for Messenger

and promising it was in testing to roll out

for Instagram DMs too.

In the end, however, the feature only came to Instagram chat

as a backwater opt-in,

and now it's been killed off entirely.

Few companies have the scale and stability

to stake out an influential pro-end-to-end

encryption position, and even fewer, namely Meta and Apple,

have made it a priority.

The worry now, experts tell us

is that Meta's decision could signal to other companies

or even other divisions within Meta

that they can do less in this space.

Johns Hopkins cryptographer, Matt Green,

tells WIRED, Public commitments to support privacy features

are literally the only thing that we, the public have.

If they're worth this, then why should we assume

we'll continue to have end-to-end encryption

in Messenger and WhatsApp?

What's especially alarming for researchers

and privacy advocates WIRED spoke to

is that Meta's stated reason

for the change on Instagram is low user adoption,

something that struck many as disingenuous,

given that Meta had previously emphasized for years

it was committed specifically

to default end-to-end encryption.

Read the full story at WIRED.com.