Meta Shuts Down End-to-End Encryption for Instagram Messaging

https://www.pcmag.com/news/meta-shuts-down-end-to-end-encryption-for-instagram-dms-messaging

by tcp_handshaker • 3 months ago

335 217 3 months ago

Our messaging system has long been designed to balance user privacy with the ability to respond to scams, harassment, and other safety concerns when users report them or when required by law

TikTok about why they won’t put e2e for private messages.

I guess it’s reasonable to give up privacy to save the children, TikTok cares so much about our kids safety and wellbeing !

2ndorderthought4• 3 months ago

This is awful. They are doing this so they can literally advertise to kids. I bet their dbs aren't encrypted at rest either. Complete foolishnes

chadgpt22• 3 months ago

Can you steelman TikTok's argument?

milderworkacc• 3 months ago

I'm not sure if this meets the bar for substantive and thoughtful discussion, but this kind of corporate cowardice, enforced by unelected bureaucrats standing at the bully pulpit is only going to get worse as the noose tightens on the open web.

The combination of hardware attestation and walled garden "app stores" is the end goal of most policymakers in this area, and it happens to suit the monopolists in Google and Apple and Facebook down to the ground.

Perhaps a timely reminder that things do not always get better over time, and that we may have lived past the high point of secure communications in our lifetime.

chadgpt22• 3 months ago

Do people expect that Instagram can't read their Instagram private messages? I don't think people expect that. And E2EE is not nearly as cheap as the HN crowd likes to pretend—how do those devices get those keys if not through a central service? Especially if one of them is a web browser?

onemoresoop• 3 months ago

Ok, so drop all pretense then and blatantly scavenge through private conversations? Then take whatever from there and maybe sell it to highest bidder?

ryandrake2• 3 months ago

I would expect any message facilitated by a company's software, and going through that same company's servers to be compromised.

mrexcess12• 3 months ago

The answer to most everyone question you’re asking is just, “public key cryptography”. It’s kind of disheartening to me that such basic 1990s tech as implemented by Phil Zimmerman is now obscure enough to merit questions like this.

Both parties exchange public keys through the central service. Only the possessor of the respective (on device, Secure Enclave ideally) private keys can decrypt the messages encrypted to the public key. The process can also work in reverse, encrypting with the private key so only holders of the public key can decrypt: this is called “signing”.

torben-friis• 3 months ago

Do people expect that Instagram can't read their Instagram private messages? I don't think people expect that.

A deeper question is why we reached a point where people can't reasonably expect their communication to not be spied on.

traderj0e13• 2 months ago

Exactly. E2EE comes with UX consequences that you can't just bolt on later. There might be something to be outraged about, but this alone isn't it.

SlinkyOnStairs• 3 months ago

It's not just "the death of the open web".

These decisions are made whilst America is falling to fascism. Meta may not intend for the abolition of E2E encryption to make fascist crackdown on free speech easier, but that is the reality of what abolishing E2E encryption does.

DHS is already subpoenaing tech companies for the information about users who criticize ICE. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/technology/dhs-anti-ice-s...

The "walled garden" isn't even that big a concern anymore. The gestapo reading every single digital communication you have and showing up to harass, threaten, or simply disappear you into a camp if the infraction is severe enough. That is what's at stake here.

lyu07282• 2 months ago

This is getting pushed in the EU too, the crucial thing to understand about where the road is headed: the goal is the inverse of who does the illicit content scanning. The idea is the government gives a list of illegal activity/speech to the platforms (such as anti-ICE activism or speaking in support of Palestinians) and then the platforms scan (presumably with LLMs) all public and private messages, deletes them and forwards them to federal and local law enforcement of the user. This is why E2E is under attack everywhere, because it makes that impossible.

Aerroon• 2 months ago

Hardware attestation really sounds like one of the worst things that could've happened to computers.

2ndorderthought4• 3 months ago

Instagram should be shut down. Not using encryption for social media and places where users expect any level of privacy is insanity.

josh-wrale• 3 months ago

How likely is this about collection of LLM training data?

daft_pink2• 3 months ago

I'm not sure the value of end to end encryption for proprietary application chats. For emails and SMS messages, your messages are being sent between different multiple servers on the open internet and it opens you up to spying, but end to end encryption on instagram is only protecting your chats from Meta.

I find the end to end encryption on Facebook to be detrimental to ease of use, because you always have to use a pin code, etc for the web interface.

If you don't trust meta with your chats, you probably shouldn't be using their application to begin with.

ergocoder3• 3 months ago

Actually, by doing e2e encryption, Meta can say to the authorities that Meta doesn't see any message and cannot be blamed for anything. We cannot snoop user's conversation, and that's generally a good thing.

The authority holds Meta responsible anyway; they don't care about the implementation detail. They want to catch a pedo, and Meta is unable to produce evidence that helps them. Everyone else will yell at Meta for helping pedos.

You can substitute "pedo" with any other heinous crime e.g. terrorism.

And this is how we arrive at the current situation.

mrexcess12• 3 months ago

The authority holds Meta responsible anyway

What form of accountability are you suggesting is even being leveraged, here? No law could force Meta to backdoor its encryption, afaik. Public pressure would be unlikely to work.

Is Meta afraid of anything real, or is this just blame shifting via ungrounded speculation?

Barrin92• 3 months ago

the entire point of encryption is that you don't trust the channel you communicate through, that's what it was invented for, communication across adversarial channels. Distrust is the only condition under which you need encryption.

In addition from a practical POV it's if anything the reverse is the case. Email encryption is larp security because plain text is the default, leaks metadata and its interfaces make it trivial for people to leak entire conversations. If there's one technology where you should just assume your messages are public, it's email before someone copy pastes or wrongly forwards your encrypted communication to fifty other people.

Private message encryption makes sense because it's now a default, information exchanged is usually personal, and the problem isn't just Meta but law enforcement extorting your data out of their hands, which encryption in the real world has prevented a few times now already.

ergocoder3• 3 months ago

It's a governance.

The executives don't want anyone else to be able to use the messages in a malicious way, so they decide to cut it at the sources of the messages i.e. e2e encryption.

This is like: corporate emails being deleted after 6 months. When an authority asks for emails from the last year, they can say they don't have it.

Now the authority can ask for the emails not to be deleted at all but then that will be a different battle the authority has to fight.

Corporate emails often don't involve pedos/terrorism, so there's much less push to retain corporate emails forever.

daft_pink2• 2 months ago

I just think that it makes a lot more sense for interoperable technologies like sms and email, where messages are transmitted between providers and isn’t as crucial for single provider technologies where you should trust the provider. It’s instagram for gods sake. It’s just a bunch of people shooting their shot. DMs aren’t even the point of the service.

shiandow• 3 months ago

I'm not sure I disagree, but I would summarise it slightly differently.

If you don't want Mark Zuckerberg to upload your private messages into his own chat AI, then stop using Instagram immediately.

sedatk• 3 months ago

but end to end encryption on instagram is only protecting your chats from Meta.

No. It protects your chats from Meta and all governments of the countries where Meta operates.

In fact, I expect Instagram to be more reachable globally now because these relaxed communication standards would be welcomed by oppressive governments as they can now retrieve messages as they please for whatever purpose they deem.

traderj0e13• 2 months ago

FB Messenger was nice and simple before they added the clunky e2ee feature, and it's not even secure cause it's just 6 digits of entropy.

WhatsApp e2ee is solid. It's painful if you have multiple devices, but it was designed for people to use on just one phone in the first place, not necessarily caring about chat history.

tylerchilds3• 3 months ago

Put simply:

I’ve talked to Apple engineers.

Siri fell behind due to how good Apple’s privacy is.

Everyone made fun of them for protecting them.

This is exactly the opposite of that, where Mark is throwing you and your children under the bus again because he’s unoriginal and doesn’t know how to make money any other way than by getting all up in your business, statistically.

cyanydeez• 3 months ago

thats a generous view. The dystopian fascist view is he's aligning with the surveillance state's interests and instagram is seen as a breeding ground for anti-american-american activities.

nothinkjustai2• 3 months ago

Apple feels like the only big tech company that remotely cares about its users. Thank god they make the best computer and OS too.

I’m sure this will not be a popular take on HN however.

dwedge• 3 months ago

Android was originally enticing because of iOS locking everything down and controlling the ecosystem

throw12345678913• 3 months ago

“But I want my freedom, I want to install whatever I want, bad Apple for locking down my devices away from me.”

They stay rather secure because of all these measures. But they’ll get dismantled, too. Because idiots push idiots in power to weaken Apple’s stance. Useful idiots is the right term.

computably• 3 months ago

"Best" is subjective. But "caring about their users"? Their response to RtR alone shows they care about their margins more than their users.

jesterson8• 2 months ago

I’m sure this will not be a popular take on HN however.

Precisely because it's your feelings, not objective observation.

No public company would care of their users, even remotely.

Indeed, during Jobs time it actually worked that way, but that time is long gone.

The OS is not nearly the best, just like laptops.

Handy-Man• 3 months ago

They were kinda forced to in the name of "think of the children". The New Mexico case that's been going on at the moment.

al_borland• 3 months ago

I usually defend Siri, because I’m perfectly fine trading a little functionality for security. I prefer it that way.

stego-tech3• 3 months ago

Same. The fact they're shoving AI into it and expanding it to providers who don't have privacy as a guiding principle is a key reason I'm sitting on a 14 Pro still, and why I'm exploring local alternatives with Home Assistant.

Besides, we just need to set verbal timers and control music. We don't need a full-blown verbal Oracle.

fragmede3• 3 months ago

No. "You have to unlock your iphone first" is such a hindrance to using Siri for anything more than setting timers and alarms. If you're doing anything that involves gloves or a mask or getting your hands messy, like in a kitchen or something, it is just so frustrating. How about making a toggle so I can choose to be slightly less locked down for Siri, and I take full responsibility if I get hacked because of it.

dyauspitr4• 3 months ago

Privacy is the reason I’m still on team Apple.

bramhaag2• 3 months ago

Apple's response to the UK gov asking to see users' iCloud data says enough about where their priorities lie [1]. They do something far worse in China [2].

Don't fool yourself into believing Apple cares about your privacy. They care about money.

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgj54eq4vejo

[2] https://www.reuters.com/article/technology/apple-moves-to-st...

jesterson8• 2 months ago

Would you care to explain why do you think privacy with Apple is any better than other teams?

alex11382• 3 months ago

Do you know what Zuckerberg said in an interview? I think it was to Lex Fridman but I could be wrong

"Apple hasn't come up with anything new in 20 years"

Very likely in response to Apple's granularity. Poor Zuck can't steal people's credentials

thephyber4• 3 months ago

I’m less impressed with Zuck every time I hear something new about him.

Apple has made incredible progress in the last 20 years, but almost none of that has been a brand new product. It has all been evolving the existing products and on building the world’s best supply chain and rearing incredible market share from Windows. To be clear, AirPods are a much bigger market than Nike shoes. Those, plus Apple Watch, iPad and Vision Pro are new in the last 20 years.

In the past 20 years, the Facebook website has evolved, but all of the other major investments by the company have been acquisitions. Instagram, WhatsApp, Oculus. Diem (or whatever that proprietary cryptocurrency was called) and the Metaverse were massive failures. I don’t know what to credit Meta for in the AI era except some of the LLAMA tooling and some open weights LLMs. CZI is doing cool things, but that’s Zuck’s private science company, not part of Meta.

jesterson8• 2 months ago

Not a fan of zack (quite the opposite), but he isn't wrong here. Apple indeed didn't come up with anything new. Their PR stunts each year are more and more laughable as time goes by.

Neither did Meta, but that's a different discussion

zer0zzz• 3 months ago

People are bozos for wanting more from a glorified egg timer. I like Siri myself.

yalok3• 3 months ago

building new features on top of E2EE is genuinely hard, and I've seen many companies struggle to keep innovating while staying strictly E2EE.

Having seen multiple leading messaging/VoIP stacks from inside, the amount of engineering spent to work around various limitations of E2EE in real prod scenarios is insane, and even for simple every-day-use features metrics don't compare to the metrics of the same feature running without E2EE.

garciasn• 3 months ago

Then a more reasonable response is: “we cannot as effectively monetize all of the data in our advertising platform disguised as another tool entirely unless we disable E2EE and we need to be able to allow not only ourselves but others to invade your privacy even more than we already do because it’s technologically difficult to do so when we encrypt your communications.”

wolvoleo2• 2 months ago

I don't buy that. They could have done more with it despite the constraints. There's been a big lack of interest from Apple for a long time. Just like every few years they introduce a completely new Mac Pro with all the fanfare and then completely lose interest and let it wither and die for 5 years.

FireBeyond2• 2 months ago

Siri fell behind due to how good Apple’s privacy is.

Garbage. That's some good spin, though. Siri is a turd in a punch bowl for many reasons that have nothing to do with privacy.

"Siri, do X thing" "Done"

"Siri, do [extremely similar to X] thing" "I don't know what you mean"

Siri is connected to my Apple HomeKit. "Siri, turn off my Kitchen Lights" "I don't know what lights you mean."

Siri feels like it never evolved past a proof of concept.

Barbing2• 2 months ago

"Siri, do [extremely similar to X] thing" "I don't know what you mean"

It’s funny. Even a team of interns could’ve mapped more synonyms, right?

& Apple Intelligence, when it uses ChatGPT, it wouldn’t be quite as horrible if Apple had paid for better tokens instead of quantizing into oblivion… I think.

Two savings for Apple resulting in subpar experiences.

crazygringo• 2 months ago

Siri fell behind due to how good Apple’s privacy is.

That makes zero sense.

The problem with Siri is... Siri. The interface itself.

Zero of my complaints around Siri have to do with it not being able to access my private data.

They're entirely about it not understanding my request in the first place or lacking a basic capability.

tylerchilds3• 2 months ago

It’s not about your data.

It’s about the sum of all expression being able to be reflected back to you in such a way that Dawkins believes he’s met intelligent life.

Facebook and Google just slurped up their data centers, while Apple was encrypted.

yangm974• 2 months ago

Siri fell behind because the bean counters at Cupertino didn’t want to spend on it, this is well documented and has nothing to do with privacy.

sotix• 2 months ago

Interesting. I've talked with engineers at Apple that worked directly on the Siri team who made no such claim and said it largely a cultural issue.

_boffin_• 2 months ago

Siri fell behind due to how good Apple’s privacy is.

Uhh. What the heck are you talking about? I’m calling straight bs on this unless presented rational.

Siri has access to knowledge.db or whatever it is, which is the centralized hub for pretty much all things. Siri phones home every request made via Siri.

I think you got sold snake oil

alex11382• 3 months ago

While encryption already ruined FB Messenger (no comment on IG encryption or lack of but people have hated Insta since Zuck took over)

While they ALREADY probably only have Messenger for nefarious reasons https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4151433

He's a bit of a... something. That might get a 'low effort comment' moniker attached to it. Rhymes with ociopath

ardit33• 3 months ago

I worked at Instagram during this (not at the EeE, but saw enough of it, to see that it was a mess).

I think the reason for dropping it, is more of a technical issue and user experience, rather than a 'desire' issue or company will. From my understanding, Zuck wanted this. The implementation was a mess, and folks have different expectations about messages to appear at every platform. Having messages disappear between devices/web, or having to back up encryption, keys, etc... it was just a terrible user experience. Even employees, disliked this feature.

This was not something actually asked by users, but more of a feature done in order to thwart all the types of legal issues created when folks use the platform.

At some point, I counted, there were 64 'leads', just to make this happen. Each lead, had a certain area, or surface/views, which means we are talking about hundreds of folks involved to make this happen (across fb and ig).

It was a boodongle, and it was something that users didn't ask.

Ps. I know, many here at HN really care about this, but the average user was not willing to put up with the degradation of the user experience in order to make this happen. All workarounds, require weakening E2E, which made it pointless.

Ultimately, If you want a truly E2E, you will have to use a platform specifically made for it. IG/FB are just not it.

Even Telegram, doesn't have it enabled by default, unless you specifiy it.

silisili• 3 months ago

I don't know all the details because I'm not a cryptologist, but Wire messenger seemed to have solved this in a way that wasn't annoying. I haven't used it since they pivoted, so can't speak much to its implementation, but I remember it working seamlessly across devices.

traderj0e13• 2 months ago

This is exactly what I expected, and it's good to hear from someone with experience.

leoh• 2 months ago

How were there 64 leads?

mandeepj• 3 months ago

'Very few people were opting in to end-to-end encrypted messaging in DMs,' Meta says.

Then why didn't you make the opt-in default like Signal and WhatsApp? :-)

traderj0e13• 2 months ago

Instagram wasn't set up this way. If you install it on a new phone or open it in-browser, you aren't expected to give it a recovery key to get your DMs back. They did add e2ee for FB Messenger, and it was very clunky besides not being secure at all (6-digit numeric pin).

mfru3• 2 months ago

i never even knew they had e2e available, so they cannot have been too serious about people opting in.

a shame that they now have to shut it off because people didn't use something they didn't know existed /s

AntonCTO• 2 months ago

Because either you have:

1. An E2E system where the provider has de facto access to the encrypted data, or

2. You shift key management to the users and let them risk data loss.

Either way:

a. The provider can release an app version at any time that accesses the data on the client side, and

b. Most of your users cannot differentiate between E2EE and SSL/TLS, nor are they interested in doing so, nor they care about it.

arealaccount2• 3 months ago

So don’t use Meta products if you care about privacy?

rustyhancock• 3 months ago

I think people feel this is the begining of the end.

Meta is part of the reason Signals E2EE spread and E2EE became ubiquitous in general.

Many governments have also turned against E2EE and I suspect it's gone from a shield where you can say we can't really help you get that data, to a constant pressure.

arealaccount2• 3 months ago

Yea fine I see that, but their entire business model revolves around exposing people’s otherwise private lives, and they are making a lot of money doing so.

It’s like using a web browser distributed by a an ad company whose business model is all about tracking folks

K7PJP• 2 months ago

This is a reductive and frankly insulting response. People want to be able to communicate with other people they will use the tools that allow them to do it. Sometimes the person I want is on Instagram, that’s how I can reach out to them. I believe privacy ought to be a human right. I don’t just limit myself to tools used by a very narrow swath of arrogant nerds. Instead, we fight for privacy.

alance• 3 months ago

Perhaps they should phase out the encryption on WhatsApp as well?

alex_young• 3 months ago

Isn't this really about "protecting" minors using Instagram?

If they allow E2E encryption, they can't scan for CSAM or do other monitoring stuff effectively, so they can't provide a "safe" place for minors.

Obviously the right answer is kids shouldn't be exposed to social media at all, but more eyeballs is more important than our kids.

bnteke• 3 months ago

cmon bud this is never what it's really about

ryandrake2• 3 months ago

It's too bad we fell so hard for centralization. In an alternate universe, messaging on the Internet could have been:

1. Alice's device has a publicly routable IP address with a domain name like alice.home.her.isp

2. Bob's device is has same qualities, using: bob.mobile.his.isp

Then Alice can just open her chat app up, add bob@bob.mobile.his.isp and off they go. I mean we had UNIX's "talk" for how long but instead of evolving/securing/fixing it, we blew it! And now we have all these companies 1. coming up with their own incompatible protocols and 2. inserting their stupid centralized servers as intermediaries. And now every chat message we send over the Internet has to be received and re-sent through a handful of amoral corporations.

tptacek• 3 months ago

Why is this any better? It doesn't solve any of the identity and end-to-end encryption problems centralized messengers do; it just changes the underlying connectivity model, which is the least interesting part of the system.

B1FF_PSUVM• 3 months ago

now every chat message

"It hurts when I do that."

"Don't do that."

bawolff• 3 months ago

If people spent half the time they do wishing for decentralized messaging working on the actual problems with it, we would have decentralized messaging.

yangm974• 2 months ago

If people spent 5 minutes googling decentralized alternatives to stuff they would realize they don’t need to build anything, just pick something and use.

jesterson8• 2 months ago

Big question is how to put sgt.cia.gov or mayor.fbi.gov in the middle between alice.home.her.isp and bob.mobile.his.isp.

That is why centralised messengers are pushed hard.

And this is not to protect society from harm, as many would assume.

lwansbrough• 2 months ago

Decentralized cooperation and associated protocols is a lot harder than just inserting messages into a MySQL database and then displaying those messages.

nemothekid• 2 months ago

In an alternate universe, messaging on the Internet could have been:

I don't think so, and I think the very reason is because the people who opt for these decentralized solutions never really sit down and try and design a product, they just want decentralization for the sake of decentralization. For them decentralization is the product. Your alternate universe evaporates when you ask the question "what happens if Alice's device is offline?".

If you squint, the exact system you are describing is e-mail, and that has become effectively centralized, and it happened long before we had tech mega corps.

zarzavat• 2 months ago

The issue with email is that too little is specified, and is instead just left up to providers and clients.

This specification vacuum forces centralization because the only way to build essential usability features is to own both the mail server and the mail client.

If email had evolved to move with the times such that basic QoL features were part of the spec rather than proprietary extensions, then it could have stayed decenteralized.

Contrast with what happened on the web. Yes it's imperfect but there is a standard that evolves to move with the times and there are multiple implementations of that standard.

cromka• 2 months ago

Didn't you just describe email?

yangm974• 2 months ago

No, email is federated, what he described is clearly p2p.

yangm974• 2 months ago

Have a look at Keet, it’s a p2p IM app, works on mobile and desktop, behind NAT and all. To be honest it’s not even the only app in this game.

It just seems like nobody cares about these things until the frog already boiled.

jezzamon4• 3 months ago

People here like it, but end-to-end encryption is an objectively worse user experience for people that don't care about that feature

jesterson8• 2 months ago

How is it "objectively worse"?

samizdette• 2 months ago

I guess because it is harder to back up and recover and harder to sync between devices. Signal has made a lot of progress on those though.

jezzamon4• 2 months ago

Main thing that comes to mind is things like this:

- If you lose you phone you lose your messages

- If you forget your password you lose your messages

- If you switch phone you often lose messages

- If you get added to a group you can't see the previous messages

CodeCompost2• 2 months ago

How is it a worse experience? It's ridiculously simple: The app sends a public key to the person you're talking to. The end user doesn't even need to notice it. What am I missing here?

Valodim• 2 months ago

I honestly can't tell if this is sarcasm

nosioptar• 2 months ago

On Facebook, I cannot receive messages. It only shows me a bit saying it's encrypted.

I used to help a nonprofit with their facebook account, made it a real pain in the ass for everyone involved.

Of course facebook has no customer service and their slop docs were of no use.

traderj0e13• 2 months ago

Well except for the people here who love IRC. They must not like e2ee.

iamcalledrob• 2 months ago

I would argue that WhatsApp's e2ee user experience is pretty decent, and didn't get worse when they introduced encryption.

But then again, their technical model has always been "fat client, dumb server" from the start.

myaccountonhn• 2 months ago

To me part of using E2EE is not because I have something to hide but because I have friends who work in human rights that do have something to hide.

I think of it not as a consumer feature but rather quite foundational for a working democracy.

jezzamon4• 2 months ago

FWIW I totally understand the reasons for e2ee and think it's good that options exist for that. Just saying that if you're a user that doesn't care about that, then there are usability trade-offs you're dealing with

dehrmann• 2 months ago

My issue with app-style E2E encryption is the app can still see your message in plaintext, and there's no way to verify it isn't doing anything with it.

lo_fye• 2 months ago

I didn’t even know it was available to opt-in to! Probably why adoption wasn’t great.

sam1r• 2 months ago

I don't understand why they would go in this inversely-progressive direction.

Shouldn't we be aiming to increase e2e encryption for the most regularly used communication platforms?

ChrisArchitect• 2 months ago

Previously:

3 days ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48024160

mid-March https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47363922

lrvick4• 2 months ago

Centralized proprietary software on on proprietary platforms can always be opted into a special update that makes all the private keys deterministic making end to end encryption useless for anyone with knowledge of that targeted backdoor.

Only FOSS can deliver verifiable E2EE, and all centralized and proprietary solutions like Zoom, Whatsapp, Instagram, etc should end the security theater.

I applaud Meta for at least being honest about one product.

charcircuit7• 2 months ago

Centralized FOSS software can do the same thing and remove encryption. Open source is not a requirement for security.

jgtor• 2 months ago

With reproducible builds like Signal does you can be sure the app you've downloaded matches the source code that's been audited:

https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/blob/main/reprod...

stuaxo• 2 months ago

Unlike the proprietary stuff there isn't a strong built incentive to remove it.

bluesocks• 2 months ago

FOSS is however a prerequisite to Kerckhoff's principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerckhoffs%27s_principle

stavros• 2 months ago

Those two claims are independent. Centralized FOSS software cannot do this, since you can audit the source, compile it, and use it that way.

Open source is not a requirement for security, sure, but it's much easier to secure OSS.

dzonga• 2 months ago

a cynical part of me thinks this can be a lucrative angle to sell an added verified program with end to end encryption.

a lot of shady messages go around in Insta DMs - whether it's cheating spouses, athletes getting exposed etc then of course other criminal shit.

if only, only if - you as the platform can sell added insurance (verified) program that screenshots can't be taken without the other party consenting etc.

BloodyIron• 2 months ago

Anyone that cares about privacy and uses Instagram won't care about this. It's not a good thing for Meta to do this but the last two+ decades has demonstrated people prefer to be ignorant and accept whatever comes. Let them eat cake and rot. I tire of being called paranoid because I know how all this can be abused.

Stancyhd8• 2 months ago

Are you having troubles spying your suspected cheating spouse phone or you having troubles recovering your stolen bitcoins assets? Kindly send a detailed mail to HENRYCLARKETHICALHACKER@GMAIL.COM, for best help

Meta Shuts Down End-to-End Encryption for Instagram Messaging

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