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Meta Shuts Down End-to-End Encryption for Instagram Messaging
- aucisson_masque 6mo 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 !
- 2ndorderthought 6mo agoThis 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
- chadgpt2 6mo agoCan you steelman TikTok's argument?
- airstrike 6mo agoNo, because it's terrible. There's no need to break encryption to allow you to report a user. You'd just report via a copy of an excerpt of the conversation and leave the rest of your communication private. If the user can't tamper with the extraction of that excerpt, you can trust it is correct. You could even extract hashes from both the reporting party and the reported party and compare them with zero knowledge of the actual conversation. More sophisticated HNers can chime in with zero-knowledge proofs and whatnot to show that their argument is DOA.
- fragmede 6mo agoYou have you contrive a complex system involving zero knowledge proofs and a lot more work, rather than just being able to see on the server the message asking for a child to dance in their underwear directly makes their argument DoA?
- airstrike 6mo agoHashing a handful of strings and comparing them is incredibly simple. Not sure where you think the complexity lies. It is in fact so trivial I'm confident Claude Code can one-shot this. But I'll humor the notion and say that, yes, I'd rather not let them see me dancing in my underwear unless I've explicitly decided to share it.
- aucisson_masque 6mo agoIt's pretty easy to do tho and it has the benefits of both allowing privacy and being able to check if someone is actually trying to abuse kids. No e2e is understandable if you're the Chinese government but isn't TikTok now run by a us company (at least in America) ?
- reddozen 6mo agoHN isn't a place for serious thought nor internal critique. No one (all bots at this point?) will critically engage past the most surface level reddit tier argument.
- 2ndorderthought 6mo agoI'm sorry but encryption like https has been around since 1995. Every software engineer knows they should use encryption to protect pii. What am I supposed to be doing on behalf of meta? To prove I am not a bot with a smooth brain? Present their argument? Their argument is they want to sell as much data as possible about adults and children to the department of war. They want to double dip and use all user data as a means to produce advertisements, algorithms, and user experiences that negatively impact children's health so they can profit. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-03-26/meta-and-google-found-liable-for-harm-to-children/106496392 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-03-26/meta-and-google-found... If you want me to argue for meta on their behalf to help them find reasons to forward their goals of exploiting their user base, I won't. The exercise has negative value.
- milderworkacc 6mo agoI'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.
- chadgpt2 6mo agoDo 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 6mo agoOk, so drop all pretense then and blatantly scavenge through private conversations? Then take whatever from there and maybe sell it to highest bidder?
- ryandrake 6mo agoI would expect any message facilitated by a company's software, and going through that same company's servers to be compromised.
- mrexcess 6mo agoThe 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”.
- 2ndorderthought 6mo agoInstagram should be shut down. Not using encryption for social media and places where users expect any level of privacy is insanity.
- chadgpt2 6mo ago[flagged]
- weberer 6mo agoYes, most people have the expectation that the carrier is not actively snooping on their conversations.
- amazingamazing 6mo agoNo they don’t lol
- daniel_reetz 6mo agoUsers generally do not believe Instagram is reading their chats. Source: I have had this conversation many, many times.
- B1FF_PSUVM 6mo ago> do not believe Instagram is reading Well, not when they had to pay people for it. Now, however ...
- 2ndorderthought 6mo agoA lot of people are blissfully unaware how any piece of software is profitable. Tech and business literacy are terribly low.
- gregoryl 6mo ago*literacy is terribly low. Everyone using this site is blissfully inside a bubble of people who can at least read and write at a high school level.
- josh-wrale 6mo agoHow likely is this about collection of LLM training data?
- daft_pink 6mo agoI'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.
- ergocoder 6mo agoActually, 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.
- mrexcess 6mo 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?
- ergocoder 6mo agoThey can because Meta has chosen to implement e2e encryption. They could have chosen not to implement e2e encryption. All within their controls. Australia already has this law in place where a company must hand over user's conversation. A company cannot make an excuse that they themselves implement e2e to prevent themselves from reading user's messages. Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-46463029 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-46463029 UK has a proposal to ban encryption this year. It is still being discussed. > Public pressure would be unlikely to work Public pressure works to a certain degree. Do you think a product manager at Meta would want to be labeled as "protecting pedos"?
- tylerchilds 6mo agoPut 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 6mo agothats 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.
- nothinkjustai 6mo agoApple 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 6mo agoAndroid was originally enticing because of iOS locking everything down and controlling the ecosystem
- esafak 6mo agoAndroid was designed to prevent Windows from dominating mobile: I literally helped create Android to prevent Microsoft from controlling the phone the way they did the PC - stifling innovation. So it's always funny for me to hear Gates whine about losing mobile to Android. — Rich Miner (https://x.com/richminer/status/1879004092602982765 https://x.com/richminer/status/1879004092602982765)
- qmr 6mo agoContinue reading with a Verge subscription
- alex1138 6mo agoWhile 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 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 6mo agoI 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 6mo agoI 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.
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- traderj0e 6mo agoThis is exactly what I expected, and it's good to hear from someone with experience.
- leoh 5mo agoHow were there 64 leads?
- mandeepj 6mo 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? :-)
- traderj0e 6mo agoInstagram 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).
- mfru 6mo agoi 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 6mo agoBecause 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.
- arealaccount 6mo agoSo don’t use Meta products if you care about privacy?
- rustyhancock 6mo agoI 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.
- arealaccount 6mo agoYea 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 6mo agoThis 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 6mo agoPerhaps they should phase out the encryption on WhatsApp as well?
- alex_young 6mo agoIsn'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 6mo agocmon bud this is never what it's really about
- ryandrake 6mo agoIt'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 6mo agoWhy 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 6mo ago> now every chat message "It hurts when I do that." "Don't do that."
- bawolff 6mo agoIf people spent half the time they do wishing for decentralized messaging working on the actual problems with it, we would have decentralized messaging.
- yangm97 6mo agoIf people spent 5 minutes googling decentralized alternatives to stuff they would realize they don’t need to build anything, just pick something and use.
- jesterson 6mo agoBig 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.
- jezzamon 6mo agoPeople here like it, but end-to-end encryption is an objectively worse user experience for people that don't care about that feature
- jesterson 6mo agoHow is it "objectively worse"?
- samizdette 6mo agoI 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.
- jezzamon 6mo agoMain 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
- CodeCompost 6mo agoHow 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?
- lo_fye 6mo agoI didn’t even know it was available to opt-in to! Probably why adoption wasn’t great.
- sam1r 6mo agoI 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 6mo agoPreviously: 3 days ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48024160 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48024160 mid-March https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47363922 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47363922
- ath3nd 6mo ago[dead]
- chris_explicare 6mo ago[flagged]
- lrvick 6mo agoCentralized 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.
- charcircuit 6mo agoCentralized FOSS software can do the same thing and remove encryption. Open source is not a requirement for security.
- jgtor 6mo agoWith 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/reproducible-builds/README.md https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/blob/main/reprod...
- lrvick 6mo agoWhile I agree reproducible builds are a huge part of the answer, if you get your builds from Google Play or the App Store you have no idea if anyone has reproduced the particular build that was served to your device. A solution to this would be independent reproducible builds like F-Droid does, but Moxie rejected this citing it would cause them to lose control of the platform and install metrics Google and Apple provide. Always thought that was a weird position for a privacy tool.
- Moldoteck 6mo agothere's no guarantee, but if the build is mass served - it's at least possible to find out. For closed source apps you may even not know
- 6mo ago
- dzonga 6mo agoa 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 6mo agoAnyone 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 6mo agoAre 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