Meta will soon remove a feature that lets you chat with your Facebook friends on Instagram. Starting in mid-December, the company will disconnect the cross-platform integration it added in 2020. The company did not provide a reason for this, but speculation suggests the move was made to avoid regulatory scrutiny in the EU.
Messenger and Instagram connection stops
The optional cross-platform integration, announced in 2019, went live a year later, bringing the company’s two most popular services even closer together. Messenger Vice President Loredena Crisan said at the time, “Just like you can talk to your Gmail account if you have a Yahoo account today, these accounts will be able to talk to each other through Messenger’s common protocol.”
Come “mid-December 2023,” Meta says, you’ll no longer be able to start new chats or calls with your Facebook friends from Instagram. If you have existing conversations with Facebook accounts on Instagram, they will become read-only. In addition, Facebook accounts will no longer be able to see your activity status or receive read notifications. Finally, existing conversations you have with Facebook accounts will not be moved to your inbox on either platform.
The EU designed the landmark Digital Markets Law, adopted in 2022, as a deterrent against platform owners gaining monopoly power. Under this law, when a company exceeds a certain revenue threshold, it comes on the EU’s radar and must comply with the terms of the law. Otherwise, the EU Commission can impose a fine of 10 percent of the company’s total global turnover for the previous year and impose some other sanctions. This “stick” of the EU is actually behind the recent user-oriented changes made by Meta and other platforms.
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