SOCIAL NETWORKS: The total encryption could answer the criticism often addressed to Facebook about its protection of the personal data considered too lax …
Facebook plans to fully encrypt the messages exchanged on Messenger and Instagram, as they already are on WhatsApp , also owned by the social network, and make these applications compatible with each other, the group said Friday.
“People want messaging to be fast, simple, reliable and private,” said a spokeswoman for the group. “We are working to ensure that more of our email is encrypted end-to-end, and we are thinking of ways to make it easier to communicate with family and friends via any network,” he said, confirming news from New York. Times . According to the daily, the group wants to achieve this by the end of 2019 or early 2020.
A unification against the promises made by the CEO
Total encryption, which would make messages unreadable by others only by the sender and the recipient, could respond to criticism often addressed to Facebook about its protection of personal data , considered too lax.
It would also mean that Facebook would fully integrate Instagram and WhatsApp into its infrastructure, in order to unify all of its applications and make them compatible. We could send a message from Messenger to someone who only has WhatsApp, for example. But this integration would defeat the promises made by CEO Mark Zuckerberg , at the time of the buybacks of Instagram and WhatsApp, to let them operate independently.
Big swirls internally
The idea of this integration, which according to the New York Times has been floating for several months at Facebook, has created a big stir internally, which the group admitted between the lines on Friday. “As you would expect, there is a lot of discussion and debate as we start thinking about all the details,” the spokeswoman said.
According to several US media, it is this fear of loss of independence, as well as differences on how to make money with these applications, which pushed the founders of WhatsApp and Instagram to slam the door. The New York Times also claims that this greater integration would ultimately allow Facebook to find new channels to increase its advertising revenue.
Facebook’s three messaging services each claim more than one billion users worldwide.
