this post was submitted on 13 Mar 2026
609 points (99.2% liked)

Technology

82591 readers
4286 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related news or articles.
  3. Be excellent to each other!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
  10. Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.

Approved Bots

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
L3s@lemmy.world
enu@lemmy.world
technopagan@lemmy.world
L4s@lemmy.world
L3s@hackingne.ws
609
Instagram quietly drops end-to-end encrypted chats (proton.me)
submitted 21 hours ago by Beep@lemmus.org to c/technology@lemmy.world
35 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Instagram appears to be stepping back from end-to-end encrypted messaging — a surprising move after years of Meta, its parent company, promoting strong encryption as the future of private communication.

A notice on Instagram’s help pages now says end-to-end encrypted messaging on Instagram will no longer be supported after May 8, 2026. The page instructs affected users to download any chat messages or shared media they want to keep before that date.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] artyom@piefed.social 59 points 21 hours ago (2 children)

The shocking thing was that they implemented it in the first place.

[–] Dojan@pawb.social 53 points 21 hours ago (3 children)

You cannot convince me that it was true end to end encryption. They had an eye in every chat.

[–] eager_eagle@lemmy.world 33 points 20 hours ago

well, they can have true E2EE and still be able to read or exfiltrate the messages, because they control both ends...

[–] artyom@piefed.social 9 points 20 hours ago

I wouldn't try to LOL

But there is valid reasoning for it. The metadata is equally as valuable as the actual content. That's why WhatsApp is so profitable. If more people are using it then it could be seen as worth the tradeoff.

[–] warm@kbin.earth 3 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

I think Facebook's "end to end encryption" just means it was encrypted when it got their servers and then encrypted again when it got to the end user.

[–] matlag@sh.itjust.works 5 points 11 hours ago

That contradicts the very definition of end-to-end, but I would not even be surprised anymore if they spinned that as "fair marketing".

[–] jaennaet@sopuli.xyz 5 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago)

My guess is that they implemented e2ee (or at least they claimed to do it) so people wouldn't be as likely to switch to actually secure messaging platforms. "See here, pleb, our systems are very secure too. You don't want to switch to Signal, and your friends are all here anyhow".

Now they just don't give a shit anymore.