As the use of private messaging with apps like Messenger surges in the pandemic, people are demanding the experience free from unwanted intrusions, more protection from scams and hacking and privacy controls, according to Facebook.

The company said that while it expects to make more progress on default end-to-end encryption for Messenger and Instagram Direct this year, it's a long-term project and it won't be fully end-to-end encrypted until sometime in 2022 at the earliest. The users want to know how their data is being used and what data is accessible by Facebook or others when messaging.