Instagram is Dropping Support for End-to-end Encrypted Messaging in April

The Instagram team has quietly announced that it will drop support for end-to-end encrypted messaging after May 8, 2026. The change was mentioned in an update to a support page (via the Proton blog), which also mentions that affected users will see instructions for downloading any media or messages they may want to keep.

If Meta’s other messaging, notably WhatsApp and Messenger, use end-to-end encryption by default, Instagram only offered the security feature in some areas. When eligible, Instagram users need to manually enable end-to-end encryption for private messages, and I wouldn’t be surprised if most of them don’t know that the feature is even available.

End-to-end encryption ensures that only users and the people they’re communicating with can see or listen to messages. Back in 2021, Meta said that it was taking its time to “thoughtfully build and implement end-to-end encryption (E2EE) by default across Messenger and Instagram DMs,” and default end-to-end encryption came to Messenger two years later in 2023.

It’s not exactly clear why the company now considers that Instagram users don’t deserve the same level of protection as WhatsApp, Facebook, and Messenger users. However, Instagram isn’t alone in this camp: TikTok recently announced that it won’t introduce end-to-end encryption for its DMs feature, telling the BBC earlier this month that preventing police and safety teams from reading direct messages when they need to may put users at risk.