EU Users Now Unlink Meta Platforms: Instagram, Facebook, and Messenger, Ahead of the New Law

European users are close to getting the new ability to unlink their Instagram and Facebook accounts, as well as other Meta services, ahead of the bloc’s new Digital Markets Act (DMS) arriving into force probably in March.

Meta has announced that soon, in March, users will be able to unlink their Instagram and Facebook accounts. Noticeably, initially, the brand will apply all these changes in the European Union, European Economic Area, and Switzerland, and notifications informing users of the change will appear soon in March.

Basically, by this feature, the brand is permitting the users to use multiple Meta services without even sharing their information between them. Now the users who already linked their Facebook and Instagram accounts with each other can easily unlink them.

Noticeably, Facebook Marketplace and Facebook Gaming users are also permitted to use these services without even drawing information from their main Facebook page, but here’s a catch. Meta stated that if they use this unlink feature, then the functionalities get reduced. This new version of Meta follows the same announcement from Google a couple of days ago, which stated that it would permit users to stop the sharing of data between services such as Search, YouTube, Google Maps, and Chrome.

In both scenarios, the changes are the result of the DMA, which fully takes effect on March 6. Meta and Google’s holding company Alphabet were among the six brands designated as “gatekeepers” under the DMA last September.

Taking a review of the previous announcement of Meta, in early December it stated that it would drop the support of Instagram and Facebook users to send messages across services anywhere in the world, although in that case the company did not cite the DMA as the reason for the changes. Also in November, it debuted an ad-free paid subscription option for Facebook and Instagram in the EU, citing unspecified regulation changes.

Apart from this, the other expected enhancements in the EU as a result of DMA include services such as WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger being made consistent with competitors and Apple being forced to open up iOS to side-loading.

Thanks to “The Verge“