Meta has silently updated its support pages to indicate that the company won’t let users on Instagram message their Facebook contacts anymore.
The company, as pointed out by 9to5Google, said the feature will shut down mid-December — without specifying a date.
The support page indicates that while you won’t be able to start new cross-platform conversations, your existing chats on Instagram will become read-only.
The social media giant first introduced cross-platform messaging in 2020. And three years later, after adding features like group chat along the way, the company is shutting down the feature without much fanfare.
Meta didn’t provide a specific reason for discontinuing the cross-platform messaging feature. The European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) requires large messaging apps to be interoperable with each other.
In September, WABetaInfo reported that Meta-owned WhatsApp has started working on an interoperability feature as the blog spotted a “third-party chats” screen.
In August, the social media giant said that it aims to turn on end-to-end encryption for Messenger users by default by the end of the year. At that time, Meta’s deputy privacy officer Rob Sherman said Instagram DMs would also get end-to-end encryption protection once the Messenger rollout is complete. The company didn’t immediately comment if the discontinuation of cross-platform messaging was related to this development.
Separately, Meta also agreed to overhaul its account center to allow users a greater degree of control over cross-site activities, upon the direction of the German antitrust body in June.
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