Meta is working on making their social media platform secure whereby users of Instagram and Messenger have control over who they speak with and can feel safe, while still supporting law enforcement.
End-to-end encryption (E2EE) has been promised to be made available in Instagram and Messenger by their parent company come 2022.
But, according to Antigone Davis, the head of security at Meta, this will take longer to be implemented, so the feature will be added to Instagram and Facebook in 2023.
REASONS INSTAGRAM AND MESSENGER WON’T HAVE ENCRYPTED MESSAGES TILL 2023
The reason why it’s been delayed on Instagram and Messenger lies in the development of a system where social media conglomerates can tackle online abuse without violation of privacy while still supporting law enforcement.
In developing such a system, Meta has been “building strong safety measures into plans and engaging with privacy and safety experts, civil society and governments.”
The bottom line is Meta aims to develop a system concentrating on three key aspects.
The first aspect includes a “proactive detection technology” that takes action immediately when a suspicious activity is detected.
Though this technology has already been implemented, there’s continuous development to improve it.
Furthermore, Meta is going the extra mile to protect underage users, defaulting their accounts to “friends only” or private and educating them about the dangers online.
The second aspect is about giving more control to users by allowing them to choose who to talk to.
This feature has already been implemented by Meta still. Filtering direct message requests on Instagram is going to be worked on, also, eliminating any content that’s offensive.
For the third and last aspect, Meta will be encouraging users to report harmful messages.
The messages reported and the users will be investigated and information will be sent to the authorities responsible, if necessary.
According to the statement made by Davis “As we roll out end-to-end encryption we will use a combination of non-encrypted data across our apps, account information and reports from users yo keep them safe in a privacy-protected way while assisting public safety efforts.”
He also said, “This kind of work already enables us to make vital reports to child safety authorities from whatsApp.”
WhatsApp already has E2EE feature, which ensures the messages content can be read only by the sender and the recipient and that prevents hackers from accessing and using them for nefarious purposes.
Alternatives like Telegram and Signal has been growing in popularity while Meta works on implementing E2EE to its other messaging apps.