In a very odd and strange move, Instagram as of yesterday has killed end to end encryption for direct messages. That basically means that anyone can see what you say to other people. For those who are not aware, since 2023 Instagram has had this feature. But they quietly updated a help page to document that they were removing this feature.
So, why are they doing this? I do know that law enforcement has been wanting companies like Instagram to pull this feature to make their investigations easier. So that’s one possibility. Or it could be the fact that Take It Down Act is about to take effect. This act is aimed at combating the publication of non-consensual intimate images, including deepfakes. The law requires online platforms to remove such content within 48 hours of a valid request from the victim and imposes criminal penalties for the publication of these images. Or the cynic in me says that it could be to make it easier for Meta which is Instagram’s parent company to use your data to train its various AI products.
Regardless, I guess if you want to use a Meta product to message someone securely, you could use WhatsApp I suppose.
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This entry was posted on May 9, 2026 at 8:39 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Instagram. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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Instagram No Longer Has End To End Encryption For Direct Messaging
In a very odd and strange move, Instagram as of yesterday has killed end to end encryption for direct messages. That basically means that anyone can see what you say to other people. For those who are not aware, since 2023 Instagram has had this feature. But they quietly updated a help page to document that they were removing this feature.
So, why are they doing this? I do know that law enforcement has been wanting companies like Instagram to pull this feature to make their investigations easier. So that’s one possibility. Or it could be the fact that Take It Down Act is about to take effect. This act is aimed at combating the publication of non-consensual intimate images, including deepfakes. The law requires online platforms to remove such content within 48 hours of a valid request from the victim and imposes criminal penalties for the publication of these images. Or the cynic in me says that it could be to make it easier for Meta which is Instagram’s parent company to use your data to train its various AI products.
Regardless, I guess if you want to use a Meta product to message someone securely, you could use WhatsApp I suppose.
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This entry was posted on May 9, 2026 at 8:39 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Instagram. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.