billforJury finds Meta liable in case over child sexual exploitation on its platforms
https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/24/tech/meta-new-mexico-trial-jury-deliberation
Many will cheer for any case that hurts Meta without reading the details, but we should be aware that these cases are one of the key reasons why companies are backtracking from features like end-to-end encryption:
> The New Mexico case also raised concerns that allowing teens to use end-to-end encryption on Instagram chats — a privacy measure that blocks anyone other than sender and receiver from viewing a conversation — could make it harder for law enforcement to catch predators. Midway through trial, Meta said it would stop supporting end-to-end-encrypted messaging on Instagram later this year.
The New York case has explicitly gone after their support of end-to-end encryption as a target: https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/meta-executive-warn...
Is it illegal or is it just illegal on general purpose platforms whose focus isn't extreme security?
We all know Meta can still read E2EE chats (otherwise they wouldn't do it) and they're using E2EE as an excuse to avoid liability for the things their platform encourages. Contrast this with something like Signal where the entire point is to be secure.
> We all know Meta can still read E2EE chats
That can't be true, otherwise in what sense is it E2EE?
In the sense that calling it E2EE gives people a warm fuzzy feeling and makes people send more sensitive information over the platform.
Has anyone actually audited it?
Probably their auditors? Lying about this would be tantamount to (very serious) securities fraud. Not sure what you're basing on your allegations on besides "trust me bro"
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I mean you can read it in your app and they're not just stored on your phone. E2E just means in transport from what I understand.
E2EE means end-to-end, where the ends are the participants in the chat. They can read it on your phone, but not on their servers. They need their app to separately transmit the plaintext to their servers to read it.
Which is technically possible.