# Meta Pulls the Plug on Instagram Chat Encryption, Citing Low Adoption As law enforcement agencies focus on combating threats like terrorism and child exploitation, and governments seek to expand surveillance, **Meta**'s decision to backtrack on its end-to-end encryption commitments on **Instagram** raises serious questions. The company will eliminate the feature from Instagram chat entirely on May 8. ## A Decade-Long Saga Ends Abruptly **Meta** has spent nearly a decade working towards deploying end-to-end encryption by default across its chat applications. After overcoming technical and political hurdles, the company announced default end-to-end encryption for **Messenger** in December 2023 and promised to roll it out for **Instagram** Direct Messaging. However, end-to-end encryption only arrived on **Instagram** as an opt-in feature, and now it's being removed altogether. ## A Dangerous Precedent? Few companies possess the resources and stability to advocate for end-to-end encryption. **Meta**'s decision regarding **Instagram** chat could embolden other companies, or even divisions within **Meta**, to deprioritize privacy. Experts fear this could undermine user security and create vulnerabilities. **Matt Green**, a cryptographer at **Johns Hopkins** who consulted for **Meta** on its end-to-end encryption rollout, said, "**Meta**'s deployment of encryption was a public commitment, and they were weathering a lot of pressure from various governments to do it... Public commitments to support privacy features are literally the only thing that we the public have. If they’re worthless, then why should we assume we’ll continue to have end-to-end encryption in **Messenger** and **WhatsApp**?" ## Low Adoption as Justification **Meta** claims the decision to revoke end-to-end encryption for **Instagram** chat is due to low user adoption. "Very few people were opting in to end-to-end encrypted messaging in DMs, so we're removing this option from **Instagram** in the coming months," a **Meta** spokesperson stated. "Anyone who wants to keep messaging with end-to-end encryption can easily do that on **WhatsApp**." Critics argue that **Meta**'s emphasis on *default* end-to-end encryption contradicts the opt-in approach they ultimately implemented for **Instagram** chat, which was buried behind layers of menus. This makes the "low adoption" argument disingenuous. **Davi Ottenheimer**, a security executive and creator of pqprobe, stated, "Designed the feature so nobody could find it, killed it for not being easy enough to find and, therefore, unpopular. It's deeply cynical." **Green** also pointed out that **Meta** learned from the low adoption of opt-in encryption on **Messenger**, which led them to advocate for default implementation. "[This is a Meta post](https://about.fb.com/news/2022/08/testing-end-to-end-encrypted-backups-and-more-on-messenger/) where they publicly commit to default encryption in **Instagram** chat. Then, seemingly without even looking back over it, they add an update to the top that implies that it was optional encryption, and blames lack of opt-in as the reason they need to remove this feature,” **Green** says. “Nothing about this is honest. They know what they promised.” **Meta** declined to comment when contacted by WIRED. In a 2019 treatise, **Meta** CEO **Mark Zuckerberg** stated, "I understand that many people don't think **Facebook** can or would even want to build this kind of privacy-focused platform—because frankly, we don't currently have a strong reputation for building privacy-protective services, and we've historically focused on tools for more open sharing." He added, "we've repeatedly shown that we can evolve to build the services that people really want, including in private messaging and stories.”