Meta aims to add end-to-end encryption to Messenger and Instagram direct messaging to enhance safety

Following the adoption of the Online Safety Bill in the UK's Parliament on September 19, Reuters reported that the United Kingdom urged Meta not to introduce end-to-end encryption on both Facebook and Instagram Messenger without sufficient safety measures to shield children from sexual exploitation.

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In order to increase safety and security, Meta, which currently encrypts WhatsApp communications, aims to add end-to-end encryption to Messenger and Instagram direct messaging.

End-to-end encryption will be used for all of your eligible communications and any accompanying files, such as pictures and videos. Your conversations are safe using end-to-end encryption as a security measure. End-to-end encryption prevents anybody from reading eligible communications as they move between your phone and the phone you message, including Google and outside companies.

Suella Braverman, the British Home Secretary, backed robust encryption for internet users while emphasising that children's protection should not be sacrificed.

She claimed that Meta had not given any guarantees that they would protect their platforms from vile abuses. They must create suitable protections to go along with their ambitions for end-to-end encryption, she continued.

According to a Meta spokeswoman, the majority of Britons use encrypted apps to protect themselves from hackers, scammers, and criminals. According to the spokesman, we have spent the last five years creating strong safety measures to avoid, identify, and battle misuse while protecting online security since we don't believe individuals want us to read their private conversations.

On September 19, the spokesman promised to provide an update on the steps Meta was taking, including banning persons over 19 from messaging minors who do not follow them and employing technology to spot and stop abusive behaviour.

To shield kids from hazardous content, the Online Safety Bill will impose stronger regulations on social media companies. A sensitive topic in the new law is end-to-end encryption; with messaging services led by WhatsApp resisting any restrictions they feel may force them to compromise encryption.

The measure, according to the government, does not outright forbid encryption, but it does oblige businesses to take action against child abuse and develop technology to examine encrypted messages as a last resort.

While IT companies contend that end-to-end encryption and message scanning are fundamentally incompatible.

Suella Braverman, the UK interior minister, stated that she was interested in working cooperatively with Meta, the owner of Facebook, on the topic of end-to-end encryption on Instagram and Facebook Messenger.

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