Don’t fall for the viral posts claiming Meta is poised to search your private messages. The company tells users that it’s not reading their Facebook, Instagram, or WhatsApp DMs. What is occurring, however, is that Meta says it will use conversations with its AI assistant to customize what you see on all of its apps — and that makes a difference.
What Meta actually changed in its privacy update
Meta’s privacy update explains that when you message with its Meta AI — whether in a private thread or because you simply engaged the assistant — it can impact the recommendations it surfaces to you, from content and groups to ads. If you ask the AI about hiking, you may see more posts about trails, group recommendations, and outdoor gear promotions. That’s similar to how your behavior already instructs the feed: If you sit through a Reel, follow a topic, or tap on an ad, those are all signals.
Importantly, Meta says that it does not use private messages with friends and family to train its AIs unless you explicitly share a message with the assistant. In a statement to Snopes, the company clarified that your one-to-one conversations aren’t being ingested for AI training or wide monitoring.
Your DMs Are Still End-to-End Encrypted
WhatsApp’s personal chats are end-to-end encrypted with the Signal Protocol by default, which means Meta cannot see message contents as they pass through or when they are sitting on its servers. Messenger and Instagram also offer end-to-end encryption for conversations that meet certain limited conditions. The company’s policies say Meta can review content only if a member of a chat opts to report it, which decrypts that particular thread for moderation.
The exception is straightforward: if you bring in Meta AI or share a message with the assistant, that isn’t just between you and your friend anymore — it’s part of your interactions with Meta’s AI systems, which can then use this data to help improve our products and/or personalize features for you.
If you don’t want the AI to influence your feed or ads, then do not give it access to your conversations.
Why the rumor spread about Meta reading your DMs
One viral Instagram post with hundreds of thousands of likes warned that “every conversation” and “every photo” would be read and fed into artificial intelligence. It resonated in an age when people feel targeted by data analytics and generative AI. But fact-checkers and Meta staff say it’s flat-out not true: the change just formalizes how Meta deploys AI-centric interactions in general, not a carte blanche to invade your private DMs.
The confusion isn’t new. Privacy notices are impenetrable, and history across the industry inspires skepticism. And experts from digital rights groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation instinctively urge users to differentiate between what they call “platform signals” (what you watch or search) and end-to-end encrypted content (what only participants can read). This is the heart of this update.
What They Know Will Shape Your Feed And Ads
Meta’s recommendation systems take into account many inputs: the accounts you follow, posts you like, time spent watching videos, comments you leave on others’ posts, pages you visit, and now prompts and replies in your Meta AI chats. With more than 2 billion people on Instagram and over 2 billion on WhatsApp, even small changes in signals can significantly influence what billions of people see.
Personalization isn’t a side hustle for Meta; advertising accounts for around 98% of its revenue, according to company financials. The more signals, the better the ad targeting and performance generally, which is why Meta wants to treat AI conversations as a pure opt-in activity that can refine recommendations just like any other.
How to keep AI from invading your private chats
- Don’t call Meta AI in private threads if you want those messages to stay between you and the other person.
- Do not forward messages to the assistant.
- Monitor your ad settings in Facebook and Instagram. You can restrict some categories, view and change interests, and stop having off-platform activity used for personalization.
- Use end-to-end encrypted chats for sensitive conversations and confirm encryption indicators from inside the app. In WhatsApp, personal messages are always E2EE.
- Prune or delete AI interactions you no longer want tied to your account, if the app provides that option. Consider AI conversations as search activity, not private notes.
Bottom line: what Meta’s update really means for DMs
Meta isn’t throwing open your private DMs for general AI training or surveillance. It is, however, tossing on one more list of signals — this time, to help shape content and ads based on your conversations with Meta AI. Keep everyday chats secure and private by not sharing them with the assistant, and utilize built-in controls to dial personalization back if you want a more privacy-tight posture.
