Instagram makes encrypted direct messaging available in Ukraine, Russia

Meta has announced that it is making encrypted one-to-one chats in photo-sharing service Instagram available to users in both Ukraine and Russia.

Users on Instagram will be alerted to the option via a notification that will appear at the top of their direct message inbox.

The notification will inform the users to switch over to an encrypted conversation if they wish to.

Messenger and WhatsApp already offer end-to-end encryption to billions of users.

"We want people in Russia to continue to be able to hear from President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and others in Ukraine," said Clegg, Meta's president of global affairs.

In addition to restricting access to RT and Sputnik across the EU, Meta is also globally demoting content from Facebook Pages and Instagram accounts from Russian state-controlled media outlets and making them harder to find across its platforms.

"We have also begun to demote posts that contain links to Russian state-controlled media websites on Facebook," said Meta.

The company already labels Facebook Pages and Instagram accounts from Russian state-controlled media outlets so people know where this information comes from.

"By providing this additional transparency, we aim to give people more context if they want to share direct links to Russian state-controlled media websites or when others see someone's post that contains a link to one of these sites," it added.

--IANS

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