Instagram and Facebook Messenger Are Breaking Up

Starting in mid-December, Instagram and Facebook Messenger are severing their ties.


Don't worry. It's a mutual split with no hard feelings.

Meta is starting to disconnect the ability to "cross-app chat" with your Instagram contacts via Facebook Messenger or with Facebook friends via Instagram.

This happy connection started back in 2020 when Facebook said it would be connecting its Messenger to Instagram, allowing Instagram to have a better chatting experience. The move would ensure users had "access to the best messaging experience, no matter which app you use." This allowed users to keep up with each other from either app.

Three years later, the two apps are going their separate ways. Not only will users not be able to start new conversations or calls with Facebook accounts from Instagram, but any existing chats with Facebook accounts will become read-only. Also, Facebook accounts won't be able to see a user's Activity Status or message seen status.

Is this a big deal? If you have employees using DM to interact with clients and customers, you might want to be aware of this change and make other arrangements. Existing chats you've had with Facebook peeps won't move to your inbox on Facebook or Messenger.

No reason has been given for the breakup, but there's speculation it could have something to do with Europe's Digital Markets Act (DMA), which requires large companies to offer interoperability between messaging platforms.

WhatsApp has been preparing a "Third-Party Chats" feature that complies with the DMA, so Meta may disconnect the cross-app chatting feature to prepare for DMA-compliant interoperability within Messenger.

Heck, it could be Meta once again trimming Messenger down. The app lost SMS/MMS capabilities on Android, and let's not forget Meta closed down Messenger Lite.

Instagram says, "To continue conversations with Facebook accounts, you can start a new chat with them on Messenger or Facebook from your Facebook account."

That's all, folks.

Want to read this in Spanish? Spanish Version >>