Announcement:
As of mid-December 2023, Meta has stopped integrating Messenger and Instagram. Despite the fact that the company has not made public the reason behind this step, it is presumed that it is an endeavor geared towards managing legal penalties in the EU.
Background: Integration and Regulatory Context
First announced in 2019 and launched in 2020, the integration let people chat with their Facebook friends on Instagram. Nevertheless, it is thought that this choice to stop integrating comes about from the DMA which was adopted by the EU in 2022. Accordingly, DM aims at ensuring that no platform owner becomes a sole dictator. The DMA has the power to impose fines not exceeding 10% of its annual turnover on an undertaking found guilty of such practice and this could be enough reason why Met could decide to disintegrate to avoid these punitive measures.
Impact on User Experience:
Post mid December, the existing message threads with Facebook friends will still available but users can only read them. It will, therefore not allow people who have Facebook accounts to view activity statuses nor check on activity received, hence not reading the receipt. Similarly, prior discussions from Facebook pages will not go into the message box of both of these systems too.
Potential Regulatory Adjustments:
Given that meta risks being forced by EU laws to effect additional adjustments to its modes of service provision. Another Meta product called WhatsApp is trying to comply with European messaging interoperability regulations in order to compete with big guys by introducing “Third-Party Chat” feature.
Threads Launch Update:
In the Meta family, possibly the barriers preventing Threads’ rollout within the EU had been overcome. Detailed information about “Anti-X” may be revealed anytime within a month but there is no official information regarding the same for now.
In this context, the progressions described above demonstrate how complex it has been for a tech giant to adjust to ever-changing legal environments as Meta does now. Check out what’s new in compliance with Meta, and possible products releases to come.