Encrypted Facebook messaging rollout will not be completed until 2023, says owner – Wales Online

The rollout of encrypted messaging will not be completed until some point in 2023, Facebook’s owner has said, after fears such a move could put children at greater risk of exploitation and abuse. Meta, which owns the social networking giant as well as the messaging service WhatsApp, said it is taking time to “get this right” and pledged to work to strike a balance between privacy and safety online. End-to-end encryption hides messages from everyone except those in a conversation, and has previously sparked warnings that it threatens children’s safety online. Antigone Davis, the boss of safety at Meta, said it would keep working with experts to tackle abuse, but insisted that in previous cases the firm was still in a position to help authorities despite services being encrypted. Writing in The Sunday Telegraph, she said: “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. “While no systems are perfect, this shows that we can continue to stop criminals and support law enforcement. “We’ll continue engaging with outside experts and developing effective solutions to combat abuse because our work…
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