Over the years, Facebook, now Meta, started to run into a fustrating problem: it had way too many messaging apps. Aside from its own homegrown social media platform, Facebook, it had also completed the purchases of Instagram and WhatsApp. To blur the line between some of these, the company attempted to merge Facebook and Instagram messaging, sort of. Now, in a new move, the apps are reverting to how they previously worked.

Meta has quietly updated a number of support pages to tell users that, starting in mid-December, Facebook and Instagram’s messaging apps won’t be cross-compatible anymore. The feature was first launched in 2020, and allowed Instagram users to message Facebook accounts from Instagram and vice versa—both messaging platforms weren’t really unified, as Instagram DMs were kept separate from Facebook Messenger, but you could send messages from one platform to the other if you wanted to. Now, this is going away. In a statement to The Verge, a Meta spokesperson also confirmed that “starting in mid-December, we will begin removing this feature. However, people can continue to message and call their contacts on Facebook, Instagram, or Messenger.”

In all likelihood, the reason behind the removal is probably the fact that not a lot of people were cross-messaging between apps. Many people who have a Facebook account also have an Instagram account, and vice versa, and these accounts are usually even linked to one another. As a user of both Facebook and Instagram, I can’t recall one single time I’ve had to message a user of one platform from the other. I use both Instagram DMs and Facebook Messenger, and if I need to message one user through one platform, I just open that app and message them.

Some speculate that the change is also being done to make a potential breakup between both apps by the FTC, or another antitrust giant, easier, especially given Meta is currently battling the EU’s decision to regulate Messenger as a “core platform service” as defined by the Digital Markets Act.

Whichever the reason is behind this, I doubt we’ll really miss this feature.

Source: The Verge