| So much is at stake right now: Urge Facebook to keep our private messages private.
Friend —
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg sat down for a three-hour interview with podcaster Joe Rogan last week. Spoiler alert: You didn’t miss much — he spent a lot of the time just whining.
News recently broke that Facebook gave Nebraska law enforcement access to a 17-year-old’s private messages — and now she’s being prosecuted for having an abortion.1 In the wake of this alarming news, Zuckerberg could have talked about whether the company planned to better protect users in the future. Instead, he spent much of the interview … complaining about waking up to angry feedback from users.
Perhaps people are angry because many of us mistakenly believed that our private Facebook messages were actually private. And that’s for good reason — Messenger claims that its direct-messaging products are encrypted — but they aren’t unless the user turns this feature on. That means the default on Messenger makes our “private” messages available for Facebook to do with what it pleases.
We need to dial up the pressure. Can we count on you to take action? Add your name to our petition to Meta: Turn on end-to-end encryption by default. Protect users and keep private messages private. End-to-end encryption of private messages makes it possible for people to communicate without worrying about third parties viewing their conversations. But while this type of protection exists, it’s clearly not the default on all of Meta’s products.
Mark Zuckerberg knows that default end-to-end encryption would go a long way toward protecting Facebook users. In the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, he promised employees that Meta would use encryption “to keep people safe.”2 While the company is finally testing default encryption in Facebook Messenger, it will not be implemented for everyone until 2023.3
Meta-owned WhatsApp already uses end-to-end encryption. So what’s the holdup? With states moving quickly to enact bans on abortion — and government agencies doing whatever they can to get information about people seeking or providing abortions — Facebook needs to act right now to keep users safe.
We need your name on this petition more than ever: Demand that Meta protect Facebook users and keep private messages private by default. In solidarity,
The Free Press team
freepress.net
P.S. Facebook won’t protect its users unless enough of us speak out. Urge Facebook to keep private messages private.
1. “A Mother, a Daughter and an Unusual Abortion Prosecution in Nebraska,” The New York Times, Aug. 18, 2022 2. “Facebook's Message Encryption Was Built to Fail,” WIRED, Aug. 10, 2022 3. “Facebook Testing Encrypted Chat Backups,” CNBC, Aug. 11, 2022  | 
