I'm almost certain that if something like this happened to any fediverse instance - that a local police enforcement would contact the admin and asked for user's data, which they are required by law to provide or they would go to jail/get a hefty fine and possibly a criminal record, they would do that too. That's also why E2E is required, to prevent such problems for instance admins - but then again, there's really nothing you can do against local law, and if it requires that you have to be able to cooperate, well... Then there's not much the admin can do, without putting himself in a real risk of prosecution, because he is breaking the law by have E2E.

That's also a good reason to be careful when selecting your home instance, and making sure that you choose one in a country that has all right laws in that regard.

Of course, that's assuming the police makes contact. I don't suppose that the admins would be searching through the DMs of people to snitch on them. And if Meta is doing that preemtively and is actively snitching on people - that's downright evil.

Wait what the heck is an illegal abortion? You mean getting one from unlicensed practioners? Some do it time to time to save money or don't know any better.

Meta complied with the request, with the Messenger chat history appearing to show Celeste and Jessica discussing Celeste’s use of home abortion medication. At the time, Celeste was 28 weeks pregnant — at the start of her third trimester.

Police used the chat history as evidence to seize the pair’s computers and phones. They have since charged the two women with a number of crimes, including charging Jessica with allegedly performing an abortion 20 weeks after fertilization and performing an abortion without a licensed doctor (both felonies), and charging Celeste (who is being tried as an adult) with the felony of removing, concealing, or abandoning a dead human body.

So… was there ever a doctor involved at all? I’m a big proponent of the right to choose, but this is pretty messed up.

Anyone happen to know if this was chat history through Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp? WhatsApp claims end to end encryption doesn't it? I thought they say Facebook Messenger is also encrypted, but not end to end.

I dont think most people actually read the article. These women performed an abortion at 28 weeks, abortion that late in the game has always been illegal in every state.

And y'all thought China having your data was something to be afraid of.

Read the article guys, don't fall into the headline trap. Facebook is definitely a bad guy, but it's not the bad guy here.