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Instagram has discontinued its most secure form of direct messaging on Friday seven years after its parent company Meta first introduced it on Facebook Messenger in 2019.

End-to-end encryption (E2EE) is a method of relaying information which allows it to only be viewed by the sending and receiving devices.

The feature was touted as the ‘gold standard’ in privacy by Meta, but received opposition from law enforcement and groups advocating for the protection of children online.

Meta began rolling E2EE out on Facebook in 2019 and completed the process in 2023; it remains the default method of messaging on the platform. It was introduced as an optional feature on Instagram, which appears to be what led to its downfall as the company said it was being rolled back due to underutilisation.

Another messaging platform owned by Meta, WhatsApp, also uses E2EE as its method of data transmission. Apps like Signal, iMessage and Google Messages also use the advanced security protocol as their default setting, while Telegram has it as an optional service.

Meta did not publicly announce the termination of the feature, choosing instead to quietly update the app’s terms and conditions in March.

“End‑to‑end encrypted messaging on Instagram will no longer be supported after May 8, 2026. If you have chats affected by this change, you will see instructions on how to download any media or messages you may wish to keep,” the company said just two weeks after competitor TikTok said it had no plans to introduce the feature.

“We are really pleased,” said Rani Govender from the UK’s National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children to the BBC. She added E2EE “can allow perpetrators to evade detection, enabling the grooming and abuse of children to go unseen”.

Maya Thomas, a privacy campaigner, said her team saw the move as a step backwards and they were “concerned that Meta may be caving to government pressure“.