Meta’s choice to implement end-to-end encryption (E2EE) on Messenger and Facebook with no ability to detect child sexual exploitation is a devastating blow to child protection. With the expansion of E2EE across Messenger, images of children being sexually exploited will continue to be distributed in the dark.
For more than a decade, Meta has chosen to aggressively detect and remove images and videos of children being sexually abused and exploited. Because of their efforts, Meta has demonstrated that Messenger and Facebook are misused by individuals sharing illegal child sexual abuse material. Alarmingly, in 2022 alone, Meta reported more than 20 million incidents of offenders sharing these unimaginable images via Facebook and Messenger.
With the default expansion of E2EE across Messenger, images of children being sexually exploited will continue to be distributed in the dark. While child victims are revictimized as images of their abuse circulate, their abusers and the people who trade the imagery will be protected
