As law enforcement agencies scramble to address threats of terrorism, child sexual abuse, and human trafficking—and repressive governments around the world look to broadly expand their surveillance capabilities—researchers fear that Meta’s retreat from its commitments to protect user privacy with end-to-end encryption on Instagram chat could create a problematic precedent in big tech. Meta spent the better part of a decade working to deploy end-to-end encryption by default across all of its chat apps. It was a saga—fraught with both technical and political hurdles. But in December 2023, the company declared victory, announcing default end-to-end encryption for Messenger and promising that it was in testing to roll out for Instagram Direct Messaging as well. In the end, though, end-to-end encryption only came to Instagram chat as a backwater opt-in feature. And as threats to end-to-end encryption from governments around the world loom larger than ever, Meta quietly announced last week that it intends to eliminate the feature from Instagram chat entirely on May 8. Crucially, few companies have the scale and stability needed to stake …