If you live in Europe, you must’ve seen some warning messages displayed in Instagram and Facebook Messenger.
These messages tell you that certain features of both apps will be unavailable for a brief time period.
But, what features are they exactly? Facebook hasn’t clearly listed everything that’s disabled right now, but we know the following:
- Nicknames for friends are disabled
- Polls on Instagram and Messenger won’t work
- Stickers are unavailable for Instagram chats
- Personalized replies on Messenger bots aren’t available
- No filters available to be sent through direct messages
- Inability to send certain files through both the apps
Why are some Facebook features removed for Europe?
This is happening because of the 2002 Privacy and Electronic Communications Directive. It’s finally being implemented across a number of European countries. It aims to impose stricter regulations on the customer data used by tech giants such as Facebook and Google (but not limited to).
While the disabled features don’t exactly tell us how they’re linked to newly enforced rules, experts are speculating that Facebook is trying to play it safe. They want to limit their features so that the chances of non-compliance are minimized.
One should definitely ask, ‘how are these features being used to collect my data that Facebook chose to disable them right away?’
It’s an interesting question and we might get the answer to that soon enough. Or, we might never know get the true answer and these features could be back very soon.
Can I still use Messenger and Instagram?
The core features of both the apps are available to use just like before. It’s only some of the more interactive features that are currently gone.
Even those features might still be available to some users in Europe. This is because the implementations will occur in stages and some users will see delayed changes.
What are your thoughts on this? Let us know in the comments below!
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I love understanding how different technologies work and explaining them to people. From tech guides to opinions, everything is interesting to me. Other than that, I enjoy writing about various science-related topics and conversing with people.