Instagram appears to be stepping back from end-to-end encrypted messaging — a surprising move after years of Meta, its parent company, promoting strong encryption as the future of private communication.
A notice on Instagram’s help pages now says end-to-end encrypted messaging on Instagram will no longer be supported after May 8, 2026. The page instructs affected users to download any chat messages or shared media they want to keep before that date.
I think Facebook’s “end to end encryption” just means it was encrypted when it got their servers and then encrypted again when it got to the end user.
That contradicts the very definition of end-to-end, but I would not even be surprised anymore if they spinned that as “fair marketing”.