Meta is expanding the purview of default end-to-end encryption on Facebook Messenger so more users can chat privately on the messaging platform. The Mark Zuckerberg-led company has been testing default end-to-end encryption on Messenger, which is different from the existing encryption it offers to users on a per chat basis, for some time and it is— now—expanding the rollout. The announcement was made through a blog post on Monday.
“Over the next few months, more people will continue to see some of their chats gradually being upgraded with an extra layer of protection provided by end-to-end encryption,” Meta said in the blog post, adding that “We will notify people in these individual chat threads as they are upgraded.”
Meta notes that the said rollout will be random to avoid any potential negative impact on its infrastructure while ensuring users’ chat experience remains “fast, reliable and rich” after the gradual switch. End-to-end encryption is basically a technology that adds an extra layer of security to chats/messages which would make them unreadable to even Meta, similar to how it is in WhatsApp.
So far, Meta has been giving users an option to chat privately on chat-to-chat basis which is to say users have to manually enable the security protocol before starting a chat. The company offers a similar functionality for voice and video calls as well. But a proper default mechanism has been missing.
Alongside expanding the beta testing rollout, Meta has is also adding more functionality to existing private chats. This includes custom chat emojis and reactions and link previews. Users will also be able to select different group profile photos for different chats and decide to show when they are online— this is opt-in. Additionally, Android users will be able to make use of Google’s chat bubble feature in these private chats, putting out these chats front and centre when they may be busy on some other app.
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