Details and reasons

Three years later, the company appears to be reversing course on integration. Cross-app chat between Messenger and Instagram will no longer be available starting “mid-December 2023,” according to a new support page. The company explains what will change after this feature is disabled.

• You will not be able to start new conversations or calls with Facebook accounts from Instagram.
• All existing chats you have with Facebook accounts will become read-only. This means that you and other users will not be able to send new messages in these chats.
• Facebook accounts cannot see your activity status or see if you have seen a message.
• Existing conversations you have on your Facebook accounts will not be moved to your Facebook or Messenger inbox.

The reasons for the changes were not specified, but they may have to do with the European Digital Markets Act (DMA), which requires, among other things, large companies to ensure compatibility between messaging platforms. WhatsApp, another Meta product, is already working on a “Third Party Chats” feature that will help meet DMA requirements by allowing messages to be sent between different services (e.g. between Telegram and WhatsApp).

It’s possible Meta will disable this service-specific cross-app chat feature to better prepare for broader, DMA-compliant interactions in Messenger.

Also, this could be another example of Meta downsizing Messenger: the app recently lost SMS/MMS features on Android, and Meta shut down Messenger Lite. Previously, there were also rumors that the company wanted to completely close Messenger as a separate application and integrate it back into the Facebook application, as it was at the beginning of its existence.