Meta silently updated her file Support pages To indicate that the company will no longer allow users on Instagram to send messages to their Facebook contacts.
The company, she noted 9to5GoogleHe said the feature will shut down in mid-December — without specifying a date.
The support page notes that while you won’t be able to start new conversations across platforms, your existing conversations on Instagram will become read-only.
The social media giant first introduced cross-platform messaging in 2020. Three years later, after adding features like group chat along the way, the company is shutting down the feature without much fanfare.
Meta did not provide a specific reason for stopping the cross-platform messaging feature. The European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) requires that large messaging apps be interoperable with each other.
In September, WABetaInfo reported that Meta-owned WhatsApp had started working on an interoperability feature as the blog spotted a “third-party chats” screen.
In August, the social media giant said it aimed to turn on end-to-end encryption for Messenger users by default by the end of the year. At the time, Rob Sherman, Meta’s VP of privacy, said Instagram direct messages would also get end-to-end encryption protection once the Messenger rollout was complete. The company did not 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 activities across sites, based on guidance from the German antitrust watchdog in June.