Facebook shareholders to block encryption plan

Activist shareholders want Facebook to delay the move as it should not come at the expense of unleashing a whole new torrent of virtually undetectable child abuse on Facebook.

Investors at Facebook’s annual stockholder meeting will vote on a proposal to postpone the company’s plans for end-to-end encryption. Facebook’s voting shares are mostly controlled by Facebook’s founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg and a small number of other executives.

Facebook says it wants to make the measure the default option across its messaging platforms to protect privacy.

ACTIVIST SHAREHOLDERS WANT FACEBOOK TO DELAY THE MOVE

Activist shareholders say this would make it nearly impossible to detect child exploitation on Facebook. The group wants the company to delay the move until after its board of directors studies the risk further.

Michael Passoff, founder of Proxy Impact, a shareholder advocacy service supporting the measure said, “As shareholders, we know that privacy is important to a social media company, but it should not come at the expense of unleashing a whole new torrent of virtually undetectable child abuse on Facebook.”

Facebook claims to be a leader in fighting child exploitation on the internet.

Facebook said, “As we expand end-to-end encryption to secure people’s private messages from hackers and criminals we remain committed to leading our industry in keeping children safe.”

FACEBOOK PLANS MORE ENCRYPTION

In March 2019, Mr Zuckerberg said he wanted the firm to make end-to-end encryption the base level of security for all its messaging services including Facebook Messenger and Instagram messaging. But he did not lay out a timeline, and many engineers thought it would be several years before it happened.

WhatsApp which is owned by Facebook already has this level of security.

WHAT DOES THE MEASURE PUT FORWARD BY PROXY IMPACT MEAN?

In 2019 tech companies reported close to 70-million videos and pictures of children being exploited to authorities. Nearly 85% of those reports came from Facebook.

The measure put forward by Proxy Impact would force Facebook to examine whether something could be done to mitigate the risk of increased exploitation of children as a consequence.

According to Mr Passoff, if Facebook were to go through with its encryption plans, 70% of the cases it reports would become invisible to Facebook.

FACEBOOK CONSIDERS REPUTATIONAL RISK

Some investors supporting the measure claim this could prove damaging to the company.

Mark Zuckerberg has previously addressed the issue directly.

“When we were deciding whether to go to end-to-end encryption across the different apps, this was one of the things that just weighed the most heavily on me. I am optimistic that predators could still be identified by other means, including their patterns of activity.”

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