“In the intervening period, as we weighed the cost of our overall portfolio and strategic focus, we made the decision not to relaunch the service,” Mozilla said. Since Send is already offline, there’s nothing you have to do to prepare for its decommissioning.

The other tool Mozilla is sunsetting is Firefox Notes. Like Send, Notes grew out of the company’s defunct Test Pilot program. It was initially a way for Mozilla to try out new ways to sync encrypted data. Once the experiment ran its course, the company kept Notes around as a tool you could use in Firefox and Firefox for Android.

In early November, Mozilla says it will discontinue support for the Firefox Notes app and syncing service. If you have the extension already installed on your desktop computer, you’ll get the chance to export all your notes. However, after November, it won’t be possible to install the extension again.

It’s never easy to see a company discontinue a product, particularly if you depended on that app for its utility. In its defense, Mozilla says parting ways with Firefox Send and Notes will allow it to focus on products like its recently launched VPN service.

Law enforcement agencies began collecting data from Encrochat on April 1st. According to the BBC, the encryption code was likely cracked in early March. It’s not clear exactly how officials hacked the platform, which is now shut down.

It’s not unusual for criminals to communicate via encrypted apps and devices. In 2018, the FBI arrested Vincent Ramos, the CEO of Phantom Secure, a company that was selling custom BlackBerrys to drug cartels. When Ramos pleaded guilty, he admitted that the encrypted handsets were used to facilitate sales of cocaine, heroin and methamphetamines and that Phantom Secure remotely wiped the devices if they were obtained by law enforcement.

In the US, politicians promoting the EARN IT Act want to penalize companies for using end-to-end encryption. In theory, that may prevent platforms like Encrochat and Phantom Secure, but the bill would make changes to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, and doing that could have far-reaching consequences. For starters, it might lead to social media platforms censoring anything that might prompt a legal challenge — or shutting down altogether.

For now at least, we can be happy that officials busted Encrochat users. In addition to the arrests, police in the UK say they prevented kidnappings and executions, “mitigating over 200 threats to life.”

“Together we’ve protected the public by arresting middle-tier criminals and the kingpins, the so-called iconic untouchables who have evaded law enforcement for years, and now we have the evidence to prosecute them,” NCA Director of Investigations Nikki Holland said in a statement.

Oman is notorious for blocking video calling services, FaceTime included, because they are encrypted and therefore difficult to track. Those services also compete with domestic telecom providers. While some encrypted chat apps occasionally sidestep those restrictions, they are rare.

In addition to helping schools and businesses, this may provide expats living abroad with another way to communicate with friends and family in Oman. Given the current state of the world, that could be a tremendous relief for many. It’s unclear if this is a temporary change or if Oman residents will be able to use the services when the situation stabilizes.

That’s great and all, but why is Facebook suddenly interested in taking this approach? After all, the company has built its entire business model around people sharing things publicly.

While Zuckerberg has been hinting at this new strategy in recent earnings calls, it’s now clear that it’s no longer just an idea. It will be the reality for Facebook and its family of apps, which include Instagram and WhatsApp, in the near future. For the past two years, Facebook has been under heavy scrutiny from governments and the public for a slew of data-privacy scandals, so it’s easy to see why it wants to make a major shift. Facebook needs a change, and it needs it quick. But that may come with troubles of its own.

Zuckerberg points to WhatsApp as the perfect example of how Facebook will rework its platform to private, encrypted services. The problem is, WhatsApp is far from perfect. Just last year, the spread of fake news on the app was blamed for inciting lynchings in India. And that wasn’t the only case connecting WhatsApp to violence in Southeast Asia. In Myanmar, pervasive hate speech and endless hoaxes have become quite common on WhatsApp, causing issues throughout the country.

It’s a serious enough problem that Facebook’s gone as far as to limit users’ ability to forward messages to multiple chats at once, in hopes that it will reduce the amount of misinformation being shared.

What happened in India and Myanmar shows how dangerous even private messaging services can be, because they have the potential to create social bubbles that bad actors can tap into. That’s going to present a challenge for Facebook as it looks to redefine itself, and it will need to be cautious about how it approaches its new strategy. “I believe the future of communication will increasingly shift to private, encrypted services where people can be confident what they say to each other stays secure and their messages and content won’t stick around forever,” Zuckerberg said. “This is the future I hope we will help bring about.”

One of the areas Zuckerberg says Facebook will start focusing more on going forward, along with encrypted conversations, is small groups. “Many people prefer the intimacy of communicating one-on-one or with just a few friends,” he said. “People are more cautious of having a permanent record of what they’ve shared.” Similar to WhatsApp, though, groups can create problems — including people using them to create racist, xenophobic bubbles on Facebook.

It’s not clear yet how Facebook plans to police these issues, and it doesn’t have the best track record. Zuckerberg knows this, which is why he said he is “committed to working openly and consulting with experts across society as we develop this.” Still, for the time being, his ideas don’t seem to offer any solutions to the many problems Facebook has created.

Zuckerberg also talks about how ephemeral content (posts that don’t last forever) are key to Facebook’s evolution. That should come as no surprise given the rise of Instagram Stories, which now has over 500 million daily active users. That’s more than double of Snapchat — you know, the app Facebook essentially ripped off to create Stories. Zuckerberg says this doesn’t mean the News Feed is going away anytime soon, but it does raise the question: How does Facebook plan to turn its privacy-focused strategy into cash? Again, that’s a question that Zuckerberg doesn’t seem to have an answer for at the moment. Presumably, Facebook will still need to make money. And you have to wonder, if you’re not giving up your privacy, what will you have to give up for the company to turn a profit?