Facebook, now Meta, has noted that it will not roll out end-to-end encryption for Facebook and Instagram apps until 2023 citing child safety concerns. Earlier, the tech giant had noted that the end-to-end encryption would roll out by 2022. Meta wants to ensure that end-to-end encryption does not prohibit it from aiding in the investigation of illegal activities on its platforms. Reported first by The Guardian, Meta noted that it would be able to detect abuse on its platforms using non-encrypted data, account information, and user reports under its new encryption plans, a method that is already used by WhatsApp.

“We’re taking our time to get this right and we don’t plan to finish the global rollout of end-to-end encryption by default across all our messaging services until sometime in 2023. As a company that connects billions of people around the world and has built industry-leading technology, we’re determined to protect people’s private communications and keep people safe online,” Meta’s head of safety Antigone Davis was quoted as saying by Sunday Telegraph.

“People expect their private communications to be secure and to only be seen by the people they’ve sent them to not hackers, criminals, overreaching governments or even the people operating the services they’re using,” Facebook CEO Zuckerberg had noted in 2019.

The report cited UK home secretary, Priti Patel, who described the encryption laws as “simply not acceptable”. “Our recent review of some historic cases showed that we would still have been able to provide critical information to the authorities, even if those services had been end-to-end encrypted,” she said.

The issue also concerns Ofcom, the communications regulator in charge of implementing the internet safety bill, which will go into effect in 2023 in the UK and requires tech companies to protect children from harmful information and prevent abuse on their platforms. Melanie Dawes, the chief executive of Ofcom, told the New York Times on Saturday that social media sites should prohibit adults from sending direct messages to children or face criminal penalties.