Whether the removal applies to calls within encrypted chats or only to messages. The Help Center announcement explicitly mentions messaging, but not calls.
Whether Facebook Messenger will also lose E2EE.
Whether messages sent before May 8 will remain protected.
The exact regulatory or business trigger for this decision.
Might be the first time I read of a service removing E2EE after adopting it. Hopefully this doesn’t start more services dropping it.
Usually I assume that E2EE is beneficial to the service as well, because it means they don’t have to bother working with law enforcement plus don’t get the bad press of sharing information.
If I remember correctly I think you have to turn on E2EE for individual Instagram chats, so as of now it was already a kind of out of the way feature.
My speculation is that governments are asking for full access and don’t want to see encryption grow more popular or expected. It lines up with public government desires to scan devices and read any chat. Could be seen as complying in advance, but then again I don’t think folks expect privacy from Instagram.
No bueno for anyone organizing on IG who was maybe using this feature as a middle ground for network while not wanting to ask people to leave the app.
That could also be a justification if they see that nobody is turning on E2EE, but they’re making a programmer triple check that all the encryption is properly implemented.
As soon as it came out, there were a lot of people in the privacy community saying they weren’t sure about Instagram’s end-to-end encryption.
But the fact that this feature has been deliberately disabled suggests the current balance of political power and seems to be a noteworthy development.
You’re way ahead of me. I though it was like public photo sharing service (like Pinterest or something), and had no idea it was also a messaging platform with DMs.
I guess DMs are carcinisation equivalent of biology.
