Not long ago, Meta was making a big deal about bringing end-to-end encryption to Instagram chats. Now they’re pulling it out.
Instagram didn’t announce this through a blog post or a press release; they buried the change in an update to their help section. The page now says E2EE won’t be supported after May 8. If you’ve got chats affected by this, Instagram says you’ll see instructions for downloading any media or messages you want to hold onto before the switch happens.
For anyone who needs a reminder, end-to-end encryption means that only you and the person you’re messaging could see or hear what was sent. Nobody else could access it. Not even Meta. That’s Instagram’s own description of how it worked, not ours.
So from May 9 onward, that protection is gone. Meta can see what you send and receive on Instagram. And any government that requests your data from them can too.
