Because of the changes, Meta will no longer have access to the content of what users send or receive unless a user reports a message
Meta announced Thursday that Facebook parent company has begun rolling out end-to-end encryption for Messenger and Facebook.
The company’s vice president of messengers, Loredana Crisan, said the encryption is built on the Signal protocol and Meta’s own Labyrinth protocol.
Crisan said the new features announced as part of the launch took years to develop, as the company’s engineers, designers, cryptographers and others built the app from scratch.
Is Meta’s ad-free service just another way to make people pay for their privacy?
“We have worked closely with external experts, scientists, lawyers and governments to identify risks and develop mitigations to ensure privacy and security go hand in hand.”
Messenger has had opt-in encryption for encrypted messages since 2016, and the move was first announced by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg in 2019. The company had previously planned to roll out the feature by default in 2022, but delayed the launch due to concerns it would prevent Meta from detecting child abuse on its platform.
Because of the changes, Meta will no longer have access to the content of what users send or receive unless a user in a chat reports a message to the company. The new features will be available immediately, but the company said it would take some time to update Messenger chats with standard end-to-end encryption.
It will take months to roll out end-to-end encryption to the platform’s more than 1 billion users. Users will be prompted to set up a recovery method to recover their messages once the transition is complete.
The move is likely to raise concerns among law enforcement and child protection groups, which have opposed companies implementing end-to-end encryption.
Former British Home Secretary Suella Braverman called on Meta not to implement the plan in September.
“Meta has failed to provide assurances that it will protect its platforms from vile abusers,” she said. “They need to develop appropriate protections that fit their plans for end-to-end encryption.”
End-to-end encryption won’t apply to Instagram for now, but the company announced in August that the change would apply to Instagram shortly after the Messenger upgrade was completed.
WhatsApp conversations are already encrypted.
Other new features being introduced include the ability to edit a message up to 15 minutes after sending, disappearing messages for 24 hours, control over whether a user can see that you have read their message , and the ability to listen to voice messages at 1.5 or 2x speed.
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