If you’re one of Facebook Messenger’s 1.3 billion users, you’ve just received some really bad news. Meta has suddenly confirmed delays in critical security updates, and there are more serious issues that should concern you even more.

Facebook is the global messaging giant. WhatsApp and Messenger are the two most popular cross-platform services, with 2 billion and 1.3 billion users, and Instagram DMs are also being added to the mix. While WhatsApp by default encrypts all messages, the other two platforms do not. Facebook announced a big plan to address this issue in 2019, moving to a fully encrypted integrated backend, but those plans aren’t going well.

The intention is for Facebook Messenger and Instagram’s DMs to be subject to the same level of end-to-end encryption by default that now protects WhatsApp. We already knew the rollout had been pushed back to 2022. Now we’re told it’s going to slip another year.

“We’re taking our time to get it right,” Meta’s global security manager confirmed last week. “We do not plan to complete the global rollout of end-to-end encryption by default on all of our messaging services until 2023.”

Words are important. Facebook had already said “2022 at the earliest” and is now talking about completion a year later. You might squint and say it’s consistent, but it’s clearly taking a lot longer than you expected and is now caught in the quagmire of government pushbacks over encryption and child safety.

Taken literally, this delay is a very serious problem. Meta’s Antigone Davis also reiterated that encryption is necessary to protect messages from “hackers, scammers and criminals” and that “at Meta … we know people expect us to use the latest technology. more secure available, ”citing WhatsApp as a mock reference.

This is nothing new. WhatsApp boss Will Cathcart has repeatedly said encryption should be standard for all messaging platforms. “End-to-end encryption prevents technology companies from accessing particularly sensitive information. Will we be able to have a private conversation, or will someone always be listening? “

It’s hard to reconcile WhatsApp’s stance, again at face value, with Facebook’s other messaging giant of over one billion users pushing that level of security even two years later. Especially when Facebook admitted to monitoring user content on Messenger and after exposing its alarming handling of private document links.

This is not Messenger’s most serious problem, however. For that, we can look again to WhatsApp and the eleven words of its anti-child exploitation statement that undermines Facebook’s argument to add full encryption to Messenger: “On WhatsApp, you can’t find people you don’t know.

The Facebook Messenger Safety Meta update wasn’t really meant to let go of bad timing news, but rather to provide reassurance about the safety of children. Apple’s ill-conceived plan to compromise iMessage’s end-to-end encryption with AI detection on the phone for sexually explicit images sent or received by children has sparked a response.

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“We believe people shouldn’t have to choose between privacy and security,” said Davis of Meta. “We build strong security measures into our plans and engage with privacy and security experts, civil society and governments to make sure we get it right. “

No surprises as to the nature of these measures: monitoring metadata to look for “suspicious activity patterns”, preventing users who admit to being adults from contacting children, filtering incoming messages and creating reports.

This approach, says Meta, “already allows us to make vital reports to child safety authorities from WhatsApp.” It won’t be enough, not even close. To contact someone on WhatsApp, you need their contact details. You can’t track WhatsApp for strangers.

Despite this, the children’s charity NSPCC tells me that “10% of sexual offenses against children on Facebook-owned platforms take place on WhatsApp”. But its encryption means that it “represents less than 2% of the abuse of children reported by the company because they cannot see the content.” So there is a problem even on WhatsApp, and the encryption makes detection much more difficult – this combination is very bad news for Messenger.

The reality is that adding posts to social media platforms is bad enough, but encrypting those posts to hide review content is dangerous. Facebook Messenger and Instagram DMs added disappearing messages and media and limited 1: 1 secret chats. It’s ridiculously simple to search both sites, looking at user profiles and photos, and clicking to send a message. The idea that all the minors on these sites “know” all their connections and can vouch for these accounts is absurd.

I am clearly an advocate for end-to-end encrypted messaging — on Messaging platforms. Go use WhatsApp or Signal or iMessage. But I’m not a fan of adding such security to social media platforms where adults share a large public space with children. Remember that there is no certainty that a profile is real.

The last point concerns Facebook itself. The concept of a private conversation on Messenger, which is found within Facebook, the world’s most closely guarded “public space”, is overstated. Yes, the specificity of the content can be protected, but the platform knows all about you and those to whom you send messages. Unlike dedicated messengers, it collects and extracts all the data it can find. He knows almost everything and can deduce the rest.

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Facebook assures me that it can keep kids safe without compromising encryption, but that ignores the social media issue. WhatsApp is different – it doesn’t carry the same risks, as he himself says in his statement. “Half of my day is explaining to people that WhatsApp is not a social network,” one platform insider told me.

The hard truth is that Facebook is not the good guardian of private messaging or content. It’s in the realm of data collection and monetization. There should be strict rules for mixing searchable social media and messaging and monitoring virtual “public spaces” that mix adults and children. Critical lessons here for the next Metaverse, which will struggle to present itself as a safe space.

The argument around child safety on messaging, now exposed by Apple and its well-meaning but poorly planned child safety updates, will continue to work. And while WhatsApp, Signal and others will have to defend their approach, social media platforms need a whole different approach.

Facebook is delaying a security update it deems critical, and there are arguments that this update should not take place and could still be banned. This is a reason to consider transferring your private messaging to WhatsApp and giving Signal a try if you haven’t already.