Despite boisterous protests from various authorities and special care groups, Meta’s pushing through with its full encryption plan, which is part of its broader process to integrate its messaging tools, enabling users to engage in DM chats across Meta’s different messaging apps, specifically with Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp.
Next Jump!
Meta’s latest advance will see the expanded testing of encrypted messages on Messenger, building on Meta’s initial Messenger encryption project, which also just launched last year. Some users will soon see their Messenger chats mitigated to full encryption. As per Messenger:
“We will notify people in individual chat threads as they are upgraded. We know people will have questions about how we select and upgrade individual threads, so we wanted to make clear that this is a random process. It’s designed to be random so that there isn’t a negative impact on our infrastructure and people’s chat experience. This also ensures our new end-to-end encrypted threads continue to give people the fast, reliable, and rich experience on Messenger.”
Meta first tested E2E encryption in Messenger, with encryption groups in chat. This is the next stage in Meta’s multi-part process to fully integrate its messaging tools. This should provide users with more privacy and enable cross-platform functionality. However, opponents say that fully encrypting the channels would also offer more protection for criminals by allowing them to hide their activity from law enforcement.
Back in September, UK Home Affairs Secretary Priti Patel called on Meta to reconsider its plans for expanded messaging encryption, as it could impede the ability of police to investigate and prevent child abuse. Clearly, there are reasons for concern here, with the switch to full encryption likely to disguise most, if not all, of this activity, making it virtually impossible to detect. Such concerns have already forced Meta to delay its full encryption roll-out, while counter-research also suggests that messaging encryption could actually strengthen online safety for children “by reducing their exposure to threats such as blackmail while also allowing businesses to share information securely.”
There’s no definitive answer here, but concerns around the protection of criminal activity remain, and you can expect that many advocates won’t be happy seeing Meta advance on this front.
The Wrap
In any event, Meta is pushing through with the project, which will see more of your chats shifted to E2E encryption. Whether that’s good or bad comes down to your personal perspective. To add to that, Meta’s also throwing in some new messenger elements, including new chat themes to help personalize your conversations, custom chat emojis and reactions, group profile photos, link previews, and active status. Admittedly, these are smaller tweaks, but the real shift is the continuing advance toward fully encrypted messaging.
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