'Very few people were opting in to end-to-end encrypted messaging in DMs,' Meta says.

Encryption offers an illusion of security. It feeds the notion that even governments, advertisers, or the platform would not be privy to the conversations. In many technical ways, that’s true. However, metadata—who you talk to, when, and for how long ...

Instagram is disabling end-to-end encryption for direct messages on May 8, 2026, a significant privacy rollback from parent company Meta. This means your private conversations will no longer be secure from the platform itself.

Instagram will remove end-to-end encryption for direct messages between users from May 8, 2026. When the date comes around, Meta will potentially be able to see the contents of all messages between users on the social media platform.