Instagram is to stop encrypting private messages between users from May, after enduring years of criticism from law enforcement and child safety groups over the feature.<\/p>\n
Meta quietly announced this month on its help page for Instagram and in an updated 2022 news post that end-to-end encryption would no longer be available on direct messages between users on Instagram from May 8.<\/p>\n
It means Meta will be able to see the contents of messages between all users \u2013 which so far it only could for those who did not enable encryption.<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for Meta said the decision to abandon encryption was due to low uptake.<\/p>\n
\u201cVery few people were opting in to end-to-end encrypted messaging in DMs, so we\u2019re removing this option from Instagram in the coming months,\u201d the spokesperson said. \u201cAnyone who wants to keep messaging with end-to-end encryption can easily do that on WhatsApp.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Meta\u2019s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, first flagged plans to roll out end-to-end encryption across Meta\u2019s suite of platforms in 2019, but did not begin implementing it until 2023.<\/p>\n
Meta had endured criticism from child safety groups and an alliance of law enforcement \u2013 including the FBI, Interpol, the UK\u2019s National Crime Agency and the Australian federal police \u2013 who argued it would weaken the ability to keep children safe online.<\/p>\n
Tom Sulston, head of policy at Digital Rights Watch, said rather than acceding to law enforcement demands, the move was more likely due to Meta deciding against moving messaging on WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram to a single platform.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe fact that WhatsApp is staying encrypted suggests that Meta might be pivoting to segregating social media from chat a bit more \u2013 the main distinction being that social media users can discover each other, whereas chat users need to know each other first,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Money was also likely a factor, he said, with Meta potentially able to use message contents to determine advertising and train chatbots.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey may not be doing that now, but the commercial pressure to do it is huge, so it feels inevitable that they will if they\u2019re not already,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Sulston said more tech companies, not less, should be moving to end-to-end encryption.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy not improve the product, rather than continue to enshittify it?\u201d<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for the Australian eSafety commissioner\u2019s office said strong encryption plays an important role in protecting privacy and security but where deployed, platforms should also prevent, detect and respond to harm.<\/p>\n
The Guardian<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Instagram is to stop encrypting private messages between users from May, after enduring years of criticism from law…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":352566,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[61,60,58,80],"class_list":["post-352565","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-social-media","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352565","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=352565"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352565\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/352566"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=352565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=352565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=352565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}