Meta will soon discontinue its cross-platform messaging service that you to message accounts on Facebook from your Instagram account. Three years after the ability to chat across services was announced by the company, you will once again be limited to messaging users on the platform you are currently using. The company has not specified a reason for the decision, but the announcement comes during its expected timeline to add support for end-to-end encryption (E2EE) by default on Messenger — by the end of the year.

In a recently added Instagram support page (via 9to5Google) the photo and video sharing platform informs users that support for cross-app communication chats will be turned off by mid-December. Ongoing chats between users on either platform won’t work when the functionality is disabled, according to Meta. Instead, they will be read-only, allowing participants to see their chat history, according to the company.

Cross-app messaging for Facebook and Instagram
Photo Credit: Meta

After Meta shuts off the ability to chat across platforms, it won’t be possible for you to start new chats with Facebook Messenger users from your Instagram account — and vice versa. If you were already chatting with someone across platforms, your chat will not automatically be migrated to the other platform.

Similarly, Facebook users who could previously see when you were online — via the Activity Status setting — or when you saw their messages, will no longer have access to these features. In order to continue chatting with friends across the two platforms, you will have to start a new chat with them on the same app.

While Meta hasn’t revealed a reason for discontinuing cross-app communication chats support on Instagram and Facebook Messenger that was introduced in 2020, it is worth noting that the company’s announcement comes at a time when it is expected to introduce an important change on Messenger — E2EE chats that are protected by default.

In August, Meta revealed that it was “on track to launch default E2EE for one-to-one friends and family chats on Messenger by the end of the year.” The company is expected to roll out support for encrypted chats that cannot be seen by anyone except the sender and recipient — not even the company — except when chats are reported by participants. The company already supports end-to-end encrypted chats on WhatsApp.