Social media giant Meta may end support for cross-app messaging between Instagram and Messenger as soon as this year. A leaked screenshot recently shared by reverse engineer Alessandro Paluzzi shows that this decision could be implemented as soon as October.
Earlier in 2020, Facebook announced plans to partially merge its most popular messaging apps, allowing users of these apps to cross-message each other. The idea here is that each service will continue to function as a standalone application, but there will be cross-platform messaging functionality for the first time. For example, a Messenger user can send a message to his or her friend on Instagram without leaving the Instagram app, and vice versa. In addition, some features from Messenger are also carried over to Instagram, like the ability to reply to a specific message, forward the message, customize the color of the conversation, etc.
To message someone on Facebook Messenger from Instagram, simply go to the Instagram Chat page and enter the name of the person you want to chat with in the search box. You can find the desired contact under the heading “Facebook Friends”. Similarly, you can also search for your Instagram friends in the Messenger app.
Basically, Facebook’s plan in connecting messaging application platforms to bring cross-platform compatibility is a good idea, giving users a lot of convenience during use. . However, this plan also raises concerns about risks related to privacy as well as user data security – two issues that Facebook has been entangled in many scandals.
After cross-messaging is revoked, Facebook and Instagram users will no longer be able to cross-message between the two platforms. The conversation will now be read-only.
Over the years, Meta has made many efforts to integrate its two major social media applications together. In addition to messaging capabilities, users can also seamlessly share Stories, Posts and Reels on Instagram and Facebook.