Meta, the parent company of Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram is moving ahead with implementing end-to-end encryption in its Messenger app in an ongoing bid to enhance user privacy. 

At the same time, the UK is in the midst of creating and deploying a new Online Safety Bill, which is currently in its third reading in the House of Lords. The new legislation will compel platforms to monitor messages to curb the spread of child sexual abuse material. Part of these requirements would mean end-to-end encryption would be compromised to some degree.  

Meta-owned WhatsApp recently threatened to leave the UK if the bill becomes law after encrypting WhatsApp’s messages. When speaking to reporters in March, Will Cathcart – Meta’s head of WhatsApp – described the bill as unprecedented in a liberal democracy, likening the restrictions to those he’s seen in Iran.

End-to-end encryption is a cybersecurity technique where messages are scrambled in such a way that just the sender and recipient can decipher it. Meta first committed to end-to-end encryption in 2019, but its progress has been stunted by regulatory pressures and safety issues until now. 

Government authorities are looking to undermine the technology on the grounds messaging apps are being exploited by criminals involved in the distribution of illegal content such as child abuse images. 

UK Home Affairs Secretary Priti Patel called the plans for expanded message encryption a “grotesque betrayal” of children and urged Meta to reconsider its plans in a Telegraph article. 

She pointed out that Meta detected and reported 22 million pieces of child abuse imagery to the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children the year they announced the shift to full end-to-end encryption. Patel also pointed out that law enforcement groups are concerned with the potential of full encryption, which potentially could not be broken by even Meta itself. 

However, complying with this measure in the UK could result in the weakened security for users in other countries. Meta has made it clear that they would choose to keep the rest of its users’ messages end-to-end encrypted rather than fully comply with the Online Safety Bill, making the future of apps like Messenger and WhatsApp uncertain if the legislation is passed. 

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While Messenger is not as popular as WhatsApp on a global scale, the app is still the fourth most downloaded app on Apple’s App Store and the Google Play store. Facebook, the social media platform Messenger operates through, has over 3 billion monthly users. 

To complete end-to-end encryption for the messenger app, Meta had to completely redesign its system from using Meta’s servers as the gateway between the message sender and receiver. At the same time the company needed to upgrade millions of active conversations without disrupting people’s speed and usability of the app.