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Some Features Not Available in Facebook & Instagram Messenger

Facebook Messenger and Instagram Messenger were limited in the European Union

As of December 16, 2020, all users of Facebook si Instagram from the European Union have been informed that certain features will be missing from Facebook Messenger si InstagramMessenger.

Some functions will not be available due to new legal regulations for messaging services in the European Union.
Since 2020, the EU has issued a directive that drastically limits the use of confidential and private data of messaging users by companies that provide such services. The Privacy and Electronic Communications Directive (ePrivacy Directive) stipulates that no company operating messaging services in the EU should collect confidential data about users through these Messenger applications.

Until December 16, the Facebook company (and others that offered similar services) could collect data about messenger users through various tracking and analysis methods, which were then used for advertising purposes for third-party companies, or for the promotion of certain own products and services.

The biggest impact of this limitation will be for advertising campaigns carried out through the Facebook Messenger and Instagram Messenger networks in the EU. Facebook will no longer be able to redirect advertisements on Messenger in depending on the audience segment targeted by the advertising campaign, will not be able to collect and use conversion data, and traffic reports will be somewhat "poorer", lacking essential data for campaigns. Messenger APIs, conversions, opportunities, custom audience segments, automatic user-driven conversation templates, and more will be history. At least for a while.

Facebook assures that it is making efforts to resolve this situation as soon as possible, but we do not know to what extent it will succeed in doing so. A "circumvention" of EU law could lead to drastic sanctions.

The good part is that as far as simple Facebook and Instagram users are concerned, they won't feel much like these new regulations. Basically, the European Union made this law to limit companies in spying on users.

As for the companies that bought advertising through Facebook and Instagram, they will be quite affected by the new regulation. The affected advertising services are:

  • Ads Manager and Ads Reporting
  • Ad Center will no longer report some results from messaging services.
  • Business Suite will have some limitations in terms of audience reporting
  • A lot of information will be missing from "Instagram Promotion Insights"

We believe that this limitation was necessary, and in time others should come, for a much larger range of services. It is true that where we are offered a free service, the consumer is actually the product. Software and application development companies have to make money somehow from these services. The problem is that it has gone too far in collecting and analyzing users' confidential information. An ad with targeted ads in a messaging service actually means that all your conversations are automatically analyzed in order to show you "relevant" ads.

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