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“People should be able to communicate securely and privately with friends and loved ones without anyone-including Facebook-listening to or monitoring their conversations,” assured Facebook product manager Jay Sullivan.
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Against that backdrop it is not likely to accelerate its plans for Messenger, provoking more of a lawmaker backlash, especially when its ownership and integration of WhatsApp-the driver behind encrypting Messenger-is potentially at risk.Įarlier this year, before the latest legal escalation, Facebook told me that it remains “very committed to making Messenger end-to-end encrypted by default,” and that any delay “is consistent with what we’ve said since the launch-that it’s going to take time and we’re committed to doing this right.” But a lot has happened since then. Facebook has become the biggest defender of such security, somewhat ironically.
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government and key allies, which argue that it provides a hiding place for serious criminals, sex offenders and terrorists. įacebook knows that expanding end-to-end encryption has become a major provocation to the U.S. But you can fix these by changing some of the settings.
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And, yes, there are weakness is how WhatsApp is set-up be default. Yes, Facebook’s moves to commercialize the app are irritating, but they don’t compromise its fundamental security. Messenger and Instagram have now been integrated, to an extent, but WhatsApp is different. The idea being that all Facebook’s messaging technologies would become interoperable, expanding the user base and, clearly, the opportunities to mine all that metadata and monetize all those eyeballs. When Facebook first announced that Messenger would become end-to-end encrypted by default, it was part of that plan to integrate the back-end platforms underpinning Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp.
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But any such update was already delayed, with no launch date in site, and that just got much worse. End-to-end encryption would stop those behaviors dead in their tracks. Not exactly in keeping with Zuckerberg’s “privacy-focused vision for social networking.”įacebook has said that “privacy is at the heart of Messenger,” but it has also admitted to “ spying ” on user content to enforce its rules and even downloading private files. WhatsApp is secure by default, whereas Messenger is anything but- even snooping on your private content. Facebook dominates this landscape-WhatsApp and Messenger are the two largest platforms, having attained a cross-platform ubiquity unmatched by anything else. You’ll have noticed that there’s a messaging war underway to attract users to these stickiest of platforms, while datamining and monetizing this vast, captive audience of interconnected users. First touted two years ago, this was the realization of CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s vision for “the future of communication increasingly shift to private, encrypted services.”
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Right now, though, those two apps plus Messenger are in the midst of a protracted three-way integration to create the world’s leading messaging platform. Facebook’s latest antitrust battle centers on the strategy behind its acquisitions of WhatsApp and Instagram, the threat being the forced divestiture of both.
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