Facebook has announced plans to make end-to-end encryption the norm across its messaging features. While this will bolster its security and give users a greater degree of privacy, experts and advocates warn that this measure could also provide inadvertent cover to child predators and other cybercriminals. And this week, several of Facebook’s shareholders pushed back against the new security plan for those reasons.

“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 sexual abuse on Facebook,” said Michael Passoff, one of the activist shareholders.

However, Facebook insisted that it can accomplish both goals at the same time, strengthening its privacy while detecting potential predators through other measures.

“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,” the company said.

Because of the sheer size of Facebook, even when it implements a positive feature like encryption, it sets off a chain reaction of unintended consequences. Maybe the company is right, and it will be able to balance both priorities. However, it has proven incapable of such delicate action in the past.

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