The parent organization for WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook is implicated in the purchase of materials with abuse over childrenInvestigations into the sale of materials containing sexual abuse of children have revealed that they were sent and paid for through Meta, the company that owns the largest messengers.
Before the investigation became high-profile, the company had left suspicious payments unchecked. Moderators who worked between 2019 and 2022 reported that even after seeing questionable transactions they were unable to contact Meta Pay's compliance departments to flag the payment.
Despite this, Meta announced in December 2023 that it had implemented end-to-end encryption for messages. Encryption hides the content of messages from everyone except the sender and intended recipient by converting text and images into unreadable ciphers. However, the move could also affect the company's ability to prevent illegal transactions through Meta Pay. Child safety experts, politicians, parents, and law enforcement agencies have criticized the move, arguing that encryption hinders efforts to rescue child sex trafficking victims and prosecute offenders.
A Meta spokesperson responded that "Moving to an encrypted messaging environment does not mean we will sacrifice security, and we have developed more than 30 security tools, all of which work with encrypted messages." The company also noted that stopping such crimes also depends on teenagers to report violations in time.
