Amid warnings from child safety advocates that Meta’s plan to encrypt Facebook and Instagram could keep abusers from detection, Meta on Sunday (Nov. 21) announced it’s pushing off the plan until 2023, according to a Tech Times report.
Meta has been using end-to-end encryption in messaging service WhatsApp and had planned to extend that to Facebook Messenger and Instagram next year, the report says. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg used encryption on Messenger voice and video calls in 2019.
“People expect their private communications to be secure and to only be seen by the people they’ve sent them to,” he said at the time, adding that Messenger is safe for voice and video calls.
The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) joined child safety advocates in expressing concern about Meta extending its encryption beyond WhatsApp. Private messaging, the group said, blocks law enforcement from detecting messages and recognizing online child sexual abuse.
With end-to-end encryption, only the sender and recipient have the access to view message contents.
A National Crime Agency (NCA) report showed that the tech industry garnered more than 21 million child sexual abuse referrals around the world to the U.S. National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in 2020. Of that total, 20 million reports were from Facebook.
Antigone Davis, Facebook’s safety chief, said Meta can detect abuse after enacting its encryption plans with account information, non-encrypted data and reports. On WhatsApp, users can file a report to different child safety authorities.
Related: Facebook Pins Its 2022 Hopes on the Metaverse, New Ad Tech and eCommerce Tools
Last month, Zuckerberg unveiled the social media giant’s plan to kick-start the metaverse, which he dubbed “the successor of the mobile internet.”
Augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) are key to the company’s vision of more actual liveness in connected experiences in the near future. Zuckerberg told investors the company expects “to make significant changes to Instagram and Facebook in the next year to further lean into video and make Reels a more central part of the experience.”
We’re always on the lookout for opportunities to partner with innovators and disruptors.
Learn More