Will Meta’s planned policy update let it read users’ DMs starting December 2025?

Claim:

A planned update to Meta’s privacy policy on Dec. 16, 2025, will give it permission to read all direct messages sent by its users and use the data to train its generative AI.

Rating:

In November 2025, an Instagram post (archived) with more than 100,000 likes claimed Meta, the company that owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, will start reading users’ direct messages once it makes a privacy policy update on Dec. 16, 2025.

“Every conversation. Every photo. Every voice message. Fed into AI,” the post read. 

The claim was also spread on Threads (archived) and prompted Snopes readers to search the site for the truth of it.

Meta’s planned privacy policy update on Dec. 16, 2025, does not pertain to direct messages and does not change how Meta handles them, though. The update instead will focus on how it uses data collected from conversations people have with Meta AI, the company’s generative artificial intelligence (AI) app. We therefore rate this claim as false.

“The update mentioned in the viral rumor isn’t about DMs at all, it’s about how we’ll use people’s interactions with our AI features to further personalize their experience,” a Meta spokesperson told Snopes over email. “We do not use the content of your private messages with friends and family to train our AIs unless you or someone in the chat chooses to share those messages with our AIs. This also isn’t new, nor is it part of this Dec. 16 privacy policy update.”

On Oct. 1, 2025, Meta revealed that it planned to update its privacy policy on Dec. 16. The incoming major change to the company’s privacy policy, according to the news release, was that Meta would start using peoples’ interactions with its generative AI features to personalize content and ad recommendations. 

Following the announcement, Meta kept both its current privacy policy, last updated in June 2025, and its upcoming privacy policy on its website.

In both current and new privacy policies, the section on that data Meta collects included the same passage about messages:

“Messages that you send and receive, including their content, subject to applicable law. On some Products, you can use end-to-end encrypted messages.”

According to Meta’s policies, end-to-end encrypted messages cannot be read by Meta: “End-to-end encrypted messages and calls ensure only you and the people you’re communicating with can see or listen to what is sent, and no one else, not even Meta, can do so.” Despite this policy, people can choose to store encrypted messages remotely with Facebook and Meta may read encrypted messages if one of the people in the conversation reports a message. When someone reports an encrypted message, recent messages from that conversation are forwarded and sent to Meta for review, according to the company’s policies. 

At the time Meta launched default encrypted messages on Messenger in December 2023, the company wrote, “nobody, including Meta, can see what’s sent or said, unless you choose to report a message.”

Not all messaging systems on Meta’s platforms are encrypted. While Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp conversations are set to be encrypted by default, chats with Facebook groups, chats with businesses and Marketplace chats are not encrypted. According to Meta policy, the company may collect that data.