Recently, we were informed that Facebook is rebranding to Meta. Soon after the announcement, the company started giving us some more information about the upcoming changes and news. Today we learned that, according to reports, it has delayed plans to launch end-to-end encryption (E2EE) by default on Messenger and Instagram until 2023.

Last year the company rolled out the new Messenger experience on Instagram which allows cross-platform messaging for users with the intention to create a unified messaging system across all its platforms.

Although messages sent through Messenger and Instagram can be end-to-end encrypted, we need to say that the option is not turned on by default. According to a Guardian report, E2EE will not arrive before 2023.

The head of safety at Meta – Antigone Davis, announced that the encryption process would happen in 2023. He had attributed the delay to the company’s efforts “to get this right.” Davis wrote as quoted by the report:

“We don’t plan to finish the global roll-out of end-to-end encryption by default across all our messaging services until sometime in 2023.”

Previously, the company had said E2EE will arrive for Messenger and Instagram Direct “sometime in 2022 at the earliest.” Meta said in a blog post earlier this year:

“We’re also working hard to bring default end-to-end encryption to all of our messaging services. This will protect people’s private messages and mean only the sender and recipient, not even us, can access their messages. While we expect to make more progress on default end-to-end encryption for Messenger and Instagram Direct this year, it’s a long-term project and we won’t be fully end-to-end encrypted until sometime in 2022 at the earliest.”

Also, the report that the social media major is also planning to combine the infrastructure of Messenger, Instagram Direct and WhatsApp.