Actually, by doing e2e encryption, Meta can say to the authorities that Meta doesn't see any message and cannot be blamed for anything. We cannot snoop user's conversation, and that's generally a good thing.

The authority holds Meta responsible anyway; they don't care about the implementation detail. They want to catch a pedo, and Meta is unable to produce evidence that helps them. Everyone else will yell at Meta for helping pedos.

You can substitute "pedo" with any other heinous crime e.g. terrorism.

And this is how we arrive at the current situation.

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mrexcess 3 hours ago | parent [-]

> The authority holds Meta responsible anyway

What form of accountability are you suggesting is even being leveraged, here? No law could force Meta to backdoor its encryption, afaik. Public pressure would be unlikely to work.

Is Meta afraid of anything real, or is this just blame shifting via ungrounded speculation?

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ergocoder 3 hours ago | parent [-]

They can because Meta has chosen to implement e2e encryption. They could have chosen not to implement e2e encryption. All within their controls.

Australia already has this law in place where a company must hand over user's conversation. A company cannot make an excuse that they themselves implement e2e to prevent themselves from reading user's messages. Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-46463029

UK has a proposal to ban encryption this year. It is still being discussed.

> Public pressure would be unlikely to work

Public pressure works to a certain degree. Do you think a product manager at Meta would want to be labeled as "protecting pedos"?

	▲	mrexcess 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> Public pressure works to a certain degree. Do you think a product manager at Meta would want to be labeled as "protecting pedos"? I think that Meta can afford as much PR as they would need to out-message this sort of BS, again if they were inclined to protect user privacy in the first place. Look at Apple.