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After years of insisting end-to-end encryption was the future of online comms, Zuckcorp has handed itself full visibility into user chats once again
Meta has quietly pulled the plug on encrypted Instagram DMs, meaning private messages on one of the world’s biggest social networks are no longer especially private.
The change took effect today, according to a revised Meta post first published in 2022. In a statement to The Register, Meta said the feature saw limited adoption and pointed users toward WhatsApp instead.
“Very few people were opting in to end-to-end encrypted messaging in DMs, so we’re removing this option from Instagram in the coming months,” the spokesperson said. “Anyone who wants to keep messaging with end-to-end encryption can easily do that on WhatsApp.”
It’s quite the reversal for a corporation that spent years telling everyone that encryption was the future of online communications, even as governments pushed back against the company’s wider rollout plans.
Much of that pressure centered on child protection. Campaigners and agencies, including the NSPCC UK’s National Crime Agency, argued wider encryption would make it harder to detect grooming, child abuse material, and other criminal activity taking place over private messaging services.
Privacy advocates, however, say Meta has just blown a hole in one of the few genuinely private corners of the platform.
The Center for Democracy & Technology said it had urged Meta to reverse the decision, alongside members of the Global Encryption Coalition Steering Committee.
“Without default encryption, millions of Instagram users are left exposed to surveillance, interception, and misuse of their private communications,” the group said. “These risks fall hardest on people who rely on secure messaging for their safety, including journalists, human rights defenders, and survivors of abuse.”
Swiss privacy outfit Proton also questioned what exactly happens to existing chats once encryption disappears. Because properly implemented E2EE prevents platforms from reading message contents, the company noted that Meta has not clarified whether previously encrypted conversations will remain inaccessible, get deleted, or become readable.
“For Instagram, dropping E2EE is just an example of how little regard Meta has for the privacy and safety of its community,” Proton said in a blog post.
Meta has become increasingly aggressive about monetizing and analyzing user interactions. Last year, the company confirmed that interactions with Meta AI tools, including those inside private conversations, could be used for ad targeting.
The company has not publicly said whether ordinary Instagram messages could eventually feed into similar systems now that encryption is gone. ®
