Facebook Merges DMs for Instagram and Messenger

[Karlston]

Facebook Merges DMs for Instagram and Messenger

A new update allows for cross-platform messaging for the first time within the Facebook family of apps.

Courtesy of Instagram

 

 

One of the last major firewalls standing between Facebook’s family of apps is no more: Starting today, Instagram users can message people on Facebook, and vice versa. How? Messenger, the Facebook-owned messaging app, has slid into Instagram’s DMs. An update replaces direct messages on Instagram with Messenger, which will be embedded inside the app. No need to download the Messenger app separately, as the Facebook app still requires; no need to link your Facebook account, or even have a Facebook account at all.

 

The update is a significant step toward a vision laid out by Mark Zuckerberg last year of knitting together the messaging systems on Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, which between them have over 2.6 billion users. “We want to give people a choice so they can reach their friends across these networks from whichever app they prefer,” the CEO wrote at the time. In addition to convenience, he touted the security and privacy advantages—namely, end-to-end encryption, which has been the default on WhatsApp since 2016.

 

End-to-end encryption is also part of what makes merging the platforms so tricky. Facebook engineers told WIRED earlier this year that making encryption the default on Messenger will take years—and so, by extension, will a full integration of all three apps.

 

Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, confirmed that full end-to-end encryption remains on the company’s map, but did not say when it will get there. Wednesday’s update introduces some other privacy features in the meantime. A new “Vanish mode” lets you make messages disappear, modeled after ephemeral messaging platforms like Snapchat. The “vanishing” messages are not encrypted; Instagram says it will retain them for reporting purposes. Facebook Messenger also has a disappearing messages option, called Secret conversations, but that feature allows individual messages to be encrypted.

 

There are at least a few new features designed to keep Instagram and Facebook friends separate: You can choose not to receive messages from people on Facebook, for example, and can choose not to link the accounts at all. Nor does the update combine inboxes—messages on Instagram will remain in the Instagram app, while messages on the stand-alone Messenger app will stay there. Threads, Instagram’s stand-alone messaging app for close friends and family, remains unchanged.

 

 

 

Facebook, for its part, sees this consolidation as a way to maintain standards across all of its platforms. Its work on “integrity,” which involves managing the risk of election interference and misinformation, will carry over from Facebook’s Messenger to the new Messenger on Instagram. Message forwarding, one of the new updates on Instagram, will have the same limits that Facebook introduced for Messenger earlier this month. And the same tools to report suspicious activity or block unwanted messages will now be available on both apps.

 

Other new messaging features—there are 10 total—are designed to make it easier to talk to people, whether they’re connected to you on Instagram or on Facebook. There’s a way to send “selfie stickers,” similar to the messaging app Line. You can send emoji reactions and reply to specific messages, as on iMessage. “There are a lot of basic features that have been missing for a long time,” says Mosseri.

 

Mosseri says the upgrades should make Instagram more of a destination for chatting with friends. Right now, people think of the app as a place to share photos, follow influencers, or shop for clothes, rather than a messaging space. By injecting Messenger’s features into the app, Mosseri says, “we can give people a more compelling experience to help us compete, particularly in the US, where we feel like we're behind.”

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I asked Mosseri who Instagram sees as its main competition. The answers were numerous: iMessage in the United States, Kakao Talk in Korea, Line in Japan. Among the privacy-conscious it’s Signal. Among teenagers it’s Snapchat. That Instagram wants to overtake almost every popular messaging app around the world makes sense: Instagram, like Facebook, makes money from time spent on its apps, and the ads it can show to people during that time. If it can siphon all the time spent texting on iMessage over to the Instagram app, it stands to profit hugely. And the company’s enormous ambitions show no sign of letting up in the face of multiple investigations—by the Federal Trade Commission, by the House of Representatives—into potential antitrust concerns.

 

Earlier this year, Congress grilled Zuckerberg on Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram, with one representative calling it “exactly the type of anticompetitive acquisition the antitrust laws were designed to prevent.” Ever since that deal, in 2012, the two apps have looked more and more alike. When Instagram introduced Stories, Facebook followed suit. Instagram adopted an algorithmic feed to look more like Facebook. The trend has accelerated since Instagram’s founders left and were replaced by Mosseri, a longtime Facebooker, who has overseen the rebranding of the app as, literally, “Instagram by Facebook.” As lawmakers, critics, and even former executives call for the two to divorce, Instagram and Facebook seem more happily married than ever.

 

 

Facebook Merges DMs for Instagram and Messenger

 

[steven36]

Facebook you cant  even read  everything  watch  videos  or anything  without  signing  in   and try  to sign up with a vpn  they want a phone number.   ive not belong to Facebook since 2012 and this  year Instagram that i never belonged  too started  blocking VPN  users from viewing  it  not signed  in, you have  to turn your VPN off  to even look  at it . so i just dont  look at it no more .  It's  not like you  cant go to other  sites  keep up with what happens there .So  this is not very surprising . At lest now users  wont be confused about what it  is it's all  just Facebook. 

 

No wonder  Facebook ranks  4th  in  most visited websites in the US and instagram ranks 12th.They want never be a number 1 website because  they block the open web.

https://ahrefs.com/blog/most-visited-websites/

 

There inferior  to all  the other social media  own by Big Tech  even YouTube  lets you watch videos  and read comments not signed in.  VPN  or no VPN  . So do Twitter  , Reddit and others.  So  you  can  read  and watch  without joining  for educational and entertainment  reasons.  the only ones  i belong too  is Reddit  because they take  disposable emails and dont ask for any info   but i hardly  ever  login and just read because i dont like the way the site is moderated  and i belong  to a private  invite  only sub  at Saidit ( they dont ask for a email)  because  they had to leave  Reddit  because of censorship . 

 

Let the masses enjoy there  fake news , censorship  ,ads , data mining and government  snooping   they deserve each other its not  like we not warn them over and over again for years about sites that want phone numbers and on a smartphone they already have your number  . when  you block  your site from the open web  for personal  gain  your a enemy  to freedom and the open web.  That why i post news here  at Nsane  and not on social media i dont  want be just a number  used  to make Big Tech  there  next billion. I can get the same benefit  from using stuff  the masses  dont use that respect  my privacy .

 

I use opensource  XMPP  with  Pigeon messenger  and i have off the record opensource  encryption , I'm not going to talk to you on there  unless i knew  you for years  because   encryption don't do no good if your a shill  for the FBI  and the  capping   the whole DM  .   Also i use E2E email most people  have email  so that's how i stay in touch .

[tysroby]

Now they just have to merge it with WhatsApp and the salad will be complete.