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.
The shocking thing was that they implemented it in the first place.
You cannot convince me that it was true end to end encryption. They had an eye in every chat.
well, they can have true E2EE and still be able to read or exfiltrate the messages, because they control both ends…
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.
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.
That contradicts the very definition of end-to-end, but I would not even be surprised anymore if they spinned that as “fair marketing”.
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.