• Internal warnings highlight risks of Messenger encryption on child safety

A Meta executive warned that the company’s plan to implement full encryption on Messenger, Facebook, and Instagram messages was “completely irresponsible,” according to newly released court documents.

Internal materials submitted by the New Mexico Attorney General’s office in a lawsuit revealed that enforcing encryption on Messenger, despite internal concerns, could significantly hinder the company’s ability to report child exploitation cases to authorities.

Monika Bickert, Meta’s head of content policy, wrote in an internal March 2019 chat: “We are about to do something wrong as a company. This is highly irresponsible.”

The documents show that senior safety and policy officials at Meta were worried that end-to-end encryption on Messenger would prevent the company from effectively detecting child exploitation and other risks, despite CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s public assurances that the company was addressing them.

The filings indicate that full encryption on Messenger was expected to reduce reports of child exploitation from 18.4 million to 6.4 million annually, a 65% drop.

They also revealed that the company would have failed to refer more than 600 child exploitation cases, 1,454 blackmailing incidents, and nine school shooting threats to law enforcement.

A Meta spokesperson said the company later introduced additional safety features before rolling out encryption in 2023, including special accounts for minors that block unknown adults from initiating contact. Users can still report suspicious messages on Messenger for review and potential referral to authorities.

The documents emphasized that the company’s semi-public platforms could allow predators to access children and connect them to private messaging services like Messenger—a risk considered higher than on WhatsApp, which is not directly linked to a public social network.