I have to wonder why do this, when that interception risk exists.

You can have someone compromise a email - or it could be a hostile actor, or government- and yes, likely not the US gov or a state gov who could issue subpoenas and get data from Facebook via other legal methods(unless they utilize methods like the Snowden leaks mentioned)

-But this does mean people will now have no counter and be wide-open. And asking other info of people, such as providing photo ID's or (hopefully they never do this) biometric data- can also be obtained and submitted by hostile actors that are well funded...

PGP still works

> PGP still works

Does it?

I used gpg today.

It seems that it still works, yes.

But is it secure?

I think evidence suggests that it may not be anymore.

Though I'm not a Facebook user, I noticed this option a while back when helping my wife with some setting, it's the last service I expected to have such an option yet to date the only one I'm aware of besides some personal hobby projects.

The issue is that people don’t know and don’t care if the email provider reads the emails sent by FB.

I’m not sure if this is correct, but it looked like it only supported RSA at some point that I tried (not ECC).

I bet not even 0.001% of FB's user base actually activated this feature.

The sad thing is that PGP seems to be the best open attempt to have encryption and it has failed miserably with the general public.