Mark Zuckerberg Defends Facebook End-to-End Encryption Strategy

Major western governments recently called on Facebook to avoid offering its users end-to-end encryption, saying that his might facilitate the trafficking of compromising photos of children as well as the planning of illegal activities since there would be no way of gaining access to the conversations that are being had. While terrorism and child abuse are serious matters that definitely need to be addressed as soon as possible, some have stated that they do not think that suspending message encryption is the answer, and it seems like Mark Zuckerberg is one of those people.

Facebook hosts weekly live streams that offer users the chance to ask questions and have them be answered by top level Facebook executives, and in the most recent stream that occurred Mark Zuckerberg addressed the open letter that various governments sent out. He acknowledged that the threats that are being posed to children as well as the general safety of the public need to be taken very seriously indeed, he did not think that governments needed that much access to conversations being had by users of his platform.


Zuckerberg stated that he was confident that Facebook had enough people working on the situation to ensure that predators were not able to use the platform to spread abusive or pornographic content, and that governments should trust Facebook to handle the content being passed around on its platform. Some have criticized this, however, saying that Facebook has not done a good enough job at preventing the spread of fake news among other things, and that this is just another empty promise. Others have lauded Zuckerberg’s commitment to the values that would make Facebook a safer place, and it seems like only time will tell whether or not Zuckerberg’s team is up to task.


Photo: Robert Galbraith/Flickr

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