Facebook has been chastised for not making E2EE the default on Messenger, particularly in light of the US Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, which means that digital footprints such as app conversations will be used as evidence in prosecuting newly criminalized abortions. This was illustrated in a recent case in which Facebook agreed with a police search request to turn up the Messenger conversation history of a Nebraskan minor and her mother, resulting in the pair’s prosecution for crimes relating to the state’s pre-existing abortion legislation.
Facebook has said that it has been sluggish to make E2EE the default on all of its chat platforms due to the difficulties of integrating such technology into billions of applications and the necessity to balance user privacy and safety. In today’s update, Facebook underlined that it plans to make E2EE the default for all conversations and calls on Messenger “by 2023.”
