SAN FRANCISCO: Facebook Inc. Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg defended on Thursday his decision to encrypt the company’s messaging services, despite concerns about its impact on child exploitation and other criminal activity.
The United States, Britain and Australia signed an open letter earlier in the day calling for Facebook to suspend its encryption plan, saying it would hinder the fight against child abuse and terrorism.
Zuckerberg, speaking in a livestream of the company’s weekly internal Q&A session, said he had been aware of child exploitation risks before announcing his encryption plan and acknowledged that it would reduce tools to fight the problem.
“When we were deciding whether to go to end-to-end encryption across the different apps, this was one of the things that just weighed the most heavily on me,” he said.
Addressing an employee question about online child abuse, Zuckerberg acknowledged that losing access to the content of messages would mean “you’re fighting that battle with at least a hand tied behind your back.”
But he said he was “optimistic” that Facebook would be able to identify predators even in encrypted systems using the same tools it used to fight election interference, like patterns of activity and links between accounts on different platforms.
He also suggested the company might further limit the ways adults can interact with minors on Facebook’s platforms.
Zuckerberg announced his plan to pivot the company toward more private forms of communication in March, capping months of internal debate over the merits of encryption, three sources familiar with the discussions told Reuters.
Inside the company, privacy engineers and others eager to shed the legacy of the Cambridge Analytica scandal saw the move as a win, as did product managers watching the steady uptick of growth at Facebook’s encrypted messaging service WhatsApp.
But members of Facebook’s safety team familiar with the child exploitation risks argued against the plan, raising deep concerns through the group’s leaders and in large company meetings with senior executives, the sources said.
The United States, Britain and Australia said in their joint letter that they had engaged with Facebook on the issue, but that the company had not committed to addressing their “serious concerns” about the impact of its proposals.
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children also met with Zuckerberg and other senior leaders of Facebook, who offered assurances that child safety was important to them.
Facebook’s Zuckerberg defends encryption, despite child safety concerns
Facebook’s Zuckerberg defends encryption, despite child safety concerns
Study finds nearly half of UK news stories on Muslims show signs of bias
- Centre for Media Monitoring finds 20,000 out of 40,913 articles from 30 major news outlets contain bias and 70% link Muslims to negative behaviors or themes
- Findings reveal ‘deeply concerning evidence of structural bias’ in portrayal of Muslims by UK press and point to ‘systemic problem’ within the media, says center’s director
LONDON: Nearly half of news articles published in the UK in 2025 that referenced Muslims or Islam contained some degree of bias, according to a report issued on Monday by the Centre for Media Monitoring. It also found that about 70 percent of stories linked Muslims to negative behaviors or themes.
The nonprofit organization, which tracks the ways in which Muslims and Islam are portrayed in the media, examined 40,913 articles from 30 major news outlets and found that about 20,000 showed some form of bias.
The study looked at “structural patterns” in coverage that “shape public narratives” about Muslims amid rising hostility toward the community.
“As the largest study of its kind ever conducted in the UK, this report presents deeply concerning evidence of structural bias in how Muslims are portrayed in the UK press,” said Rizwana Hamid, the director of the organization.
It found that 70 percent of the articles it reviewed highlighted negative aspects related to Muslims, though not all of the stories were biased in themselves. The wider patterns were also troubling: 44 percent of the coverage omitted key context, 17 percent relied on generalizations, and 13 percent included outright misrepresentation.
Taken together, the monitoring center said, the findings amounted to evidence of an “information integrity crisis” that distorts public understanding, and “a deeply concerning trend” in reporting on Muslims.
The research points to a “systemic problem within our media ecosystem,” Hamid said.
“When entire communities are repeatedly framed through lenses of suspicion or threat, it inevitably shapes public attitudes, political debate and the everyday lives of British Muslims,” she added.
News brands targeting right-wing audiences were more likely to produce biased coverage, the report found.
The Spectator magazine and GB News were identified as having the highest proportion of “very biased” articles, and as the “worst across all five bias categories”: negative framing, generalizations, misrepresentation, lack of context, and problematic headlines.
Other outlets highlighted for displaying high levels of biased content about Muslims included The Telegraph, The Jewish Chronicle, Daily Express, The Sun, Daily Mail and The Times.
In contrast, the BBC, other broadcasters and left-leaning outlets recorded the lowest rates of bias in the study.
The research comes as British Muslims report rising levels of discrimination. Official figures published in October revealed that religious hate crimes against Muslims rose by 19 percent in the year to March 2025 compared with the previous 12 months.
