Social media giant Meta is about to start reading users’ conversations, including direct messages (DMs) and chats with its AI, with no option to opt out other than not to use their platforms – which include Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, which provides no option to turn its AI off. This data access will start in most of the world from 16 December though in the EU and UK, which have stricter data protection laws, it will start later – apparently from 4 March next year.
PC World Magazine reported:
The initiative will begin starting December 16th, 2025, initially outside the EU and UK where stricter data protection laws will force a later introduction. The data will be used to further personalize advertising and content, and it won’t be possible to opt out.
Meta spying
Industry media analyses have tended so far to focus on the issue of AI chats but Facebook, in a privacy update titled “Your activity and information that you provide” includes DMs in the data it can access, gather and use:
Meta has been known to provide ‘near real-time’ data on its users to the authorities since at least 2021, though previously this has not usually – at least officially – included the content of DMs. A report in Israel’s 972 Magazine and analysis by Tech for Palestine last year revealed that Israel’s ‘Lavender’ AI targeting system was using WhatsApp data to target Palestinians for murder, often based on as little as a ‘target’ being in a WhatsApp group with someone else who had been targeted and killed. One of 972’s sources told the magazine that after Lavender identified a victim, Israel:
bombed them in homes without hesitation, as a first option. It’s much easier to bomb a family’s home. The system is built to look for them in these situations.
Far beyond overreach
Journalist Jamal Khashoggi was also murdered in a Saudi embassy after his family’s WhatsApp messages were hacked by Israel’s ‘Pegasus’ spyware, which has also been used to spy on human rights activists, journalists, political opponents and Western government ministers.
Meta denies that its products contain backdoors and that it is (currently) reading messages. However, the company is now being sued in the US by its former head of security, who alleges that it allows thousands of its engineers to access sensitive user data and has not adequately tackled issues allowing the hacking of over 100,000 accounts a day. Complainant Attaullah Baig claims that the company ignored his warnings and sacked him for raising concerns. Meta denies the allegations.
The Meta issue comes on top of wider concerns over online security after digital rights group SMEX revealed that all Samsung mid-range handsets in large parts of the world come pre-installed with ‘unremovable’ Israeli spyware.
Featured image via Shutter Speed
