The measure, described as temporary, comes as a reaction to legislative investigations and litigation against Facebook in Europe and other parts of the world. Many of the open cases are already lost, prompting the US company to act prudently in enforcing local privacy laws.
Thus, European users of the Facebook Messenger and Instagram platforms can encounter notification messages signaling the absence of certain functions they are trying to access. Usually, these are non-essential things like using animated stickers, or initiating a survey between members of the chat group.
Facebook promises that the measures taken are temporary
The new rules in the ePrivacy Directive, abbreviated to the ePrivacy Directive, limit what companies can do with the messages you send and the metadata attached to those messages. The rules apply not only to telecommunications companies, but also to “over-the-top” messaging services, such as Messenger and Instagram. But the rules outlined seem to circumvent the “fun” functions of messaging platforms, the measures taken by Facebook seem rather strange.
For example, European users can no longer change the name of a contact in the list with a nickname of their choice, the functionality is disabled.
Facebook does not provide a complete list of Messenger / Instagram features disabled, company representatives saying that these details do not really matter and will be returned soon anyway.
