Instagram to Discontinue End-to-End Encryption For Private Messages From May

New Delhi: Private messages in Instagram will no longer be encrypted from May 8, 2026, Meta has quietly announced, reported The Guardian. This would been that Meta will be able to see the contents of messages between all users. Till now it could do this for only those who did not enable encryption.

After facing criticism from law enforcement and child safety groups over the feature for several years, Meta quietly announced this month on its help page for Instagram along with an updated 2022 news post that end-to-end encryption would no longer be available on direct messages between users on Instagram from 8 May 2026.

The Guardian report cited a spokesperson for Meta who said the decision to abandon encryption was due to low uptake.

“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. Anyone who wants to keep messaging with end-to-end encryption can easily do that on WhatsApp,” said the spokesperson.

Earlier, Meta’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, had in 2019 first flagged plans to roll out end-to-end encryption across Meta’s suite of platforms in 2019 but its implementation started only in 2023.

Several law enforcement agencies such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Interpol, the UK’s National Crime Agency and the Australian federal police had criticised Meta over the move along with child safety groups who argued it would weaken the ability to keep children safe online.

“The fact that WhatsApp is staying encrypted suggests that Meta might be pivoting to segregating social media from chat a bit more – the main distinction being that social media users can discover each other, whereas chat users need to know each other first,” Tom Sulston, head of policy at Digital Rights Watch told The Guardian.

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