We continue to strengthen our enforcement systems to root out potentially predatory accounts.” These include defaulting anyone who is under the age of 16 to more private settings when they join Facebook and limiting adults from sending private messages to teens if they aren’t friends.

Responding to the criticism, a Meta spokesperson said, “We don’t think people want us reading their private messages so have spent the last five years developing robust safety measures to prevent and combat abuse while maintaining online security. WhatsApp, which is also owned by Meta, has featured end-to-end encryption since 2016, as do other messaging apps such as Signal and Telegram. Meta is one of many companies that have adopted end-to-end encryption in their apps. And in January, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is scheduled to testify before a Senate committee about child exploitation issues on social media.

On Wednesday, New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez announced that his office was suing the company, calling Facebook and Instagram “breeding grounds” for predators targeting children. The criticism comes as Meta faces intense scrutiny over child safety on its platform. The nonprofit organization praised Meta’s previous work on the topic, noting that the company reported more than 20 million incidents of the transmission of child sexual abuse material on its platforms last year, more than any other tech company, but warned that the expansion of encryption means “images of children being sexually exploited will continue to be distributed in the dark.”

Setting defaults in xm8