Their history approach is interesting, supporting key rotations as well.
However, metadata is still un-encrypted, same as on whatsapp. Meta knows who you talk to, and when - this is juicy enough for both ad-targeting, and government surveillance.
Also I believe they create an id on device for the media and can identify (known) images are going back and forth. Don't know why they couldn't use this for targeting even though "the data is encrypted"
I would say that people have currently major misunderstanding between what is more important.
Let's imagine a situation where all the messages from Meta's platforms are leaked.
On other scenario message content is plaintext, but senders, receivers, timestamps and locations are encrypted (on top of app usage behaviour).
On the other scenario, all the contents are encrypted, but the metadata is public.
We would know to whom everyone, in anytime, in any location, in which interval has talked to.
As a thought experiment, I’m interested in people listing metadata that fits the legal definition and teasing out types that the public would probably not think is metadata.
I’ll start first off the top of my head:
- The (real) identity of you and every person you talk to
- The time of the messages
- The location they were sent from
- The specific device used to send them
- A sentiment analysis: were the messages positive? Negative? Depressed? Anxious? Sarcastic?
- A description of the pictures that were sent (for example by an on-device AI model)
Exactly. This is pure marketing. "Normal" people do not know the difference and there is greater chance that they stay in Meta apps instead of switching.
However, metadata is still un-encrypted, same as on whatsapp. Meta knows who you talk to, and when - this is juicy enough for both ad-targeting, and government surveillance.