Since the landmark Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, privacy advocates and Facebook employees alike have pressed the company to explain how it will handle the data of users seeking abortions. Many experts expressed concern that the social media giant would share this info with law enforcement and potentially compromise user privacy. However, according to remarks delivered to Facebook employees from CEO Mark Zuckerberg, the company’s ongoing encryption efforts will help protect these users.

“Protecting people’s privacy is always important,” Zuckerberg allegedly said in the recording. “I’ve had a lot of debates over time around things like encryption… Where there have been some safety advocates who have said, ‘Hey, if you encrypt messages, you’re making it harder to see some bad behavior?’ Well, you know, I think in this case having your messages encrypted is actually one of the ways that you keep people safe from bad behavior or, or overbroad requests for information.”

Of course, end-to-end encryption is not yet the default for Facebook’s products, with that change expected to arrive sometime in 2023. Meanwhile, it’s entirely up to Facebook to decide what constitutes an “overbroad” information request. So while Zuckerberg’s words are reassuring, there’s almost no concrete guarantee Facebook will be able to safeguard user privacy in these instances.

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