Why Meta is retreating from encryption – Platformer

In 2019, over the course of more than 3,000 words, Mark Zuckerberg made the case for encryption. “As I think about the future of the internet, I believe a privacy-focused communications platform will become even more important than today’s open platforms,” Zuckerberg wrote in a Facebook note . “Privacy gives people the freedom to be themselves and connect more naturally, which is why we build social networks.” To serve this world, Zuckerberg wrote, the company would rebuild Instagram and Messenger to support end-to-end encryption of messages. Not even Meta would be able to read the contents of the messages.  The announcement was one of a series of changes the company planned in an effort to restore trust after the Cambridge Analytica scandal and the biggest security breach in the company’s history. It was intended to sound audacious and counterintuitive. “I understand that many people don’t think Facebook can or would even want to build this kind of privacy-focused platform,” Zuckerberg wrote, “because frankly we don’t currently have a strong reputation for building privacy protective services.” In the intervening years, the need for encrypted messaging has only grown more salient. The US military branded Anthropic a “supply chain risk” in part
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