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Unlink your Instagram, Facebook, and Messenger accounts – but only in Europe

Meta has announced a radical new move to comply with European antitrust requirements taking effect in March. The company will let you unlink your Instagram, Facebook, and Messenger accounts – as well as those for Facebook Marketplace and Facebook Gaming.

This means you’ll have the option of setting each up as a completely separate account, with no shared data between them …

Meta made the announcement in a press release.

People using Instagram and Facebook in the EU, EEA and Switzerland will soon be offered several choices about how they would like to manage their experiences across Meta products […]

Some of the choices that users will be able to make include …

Information use between Facebook and Instagram: People who have already chosen to connect their Instagram and Facebook accounts will be able to choose either:

  • to continue to connect their accounts through our Accounts Center so that their information will be used across their Instagram and Facebook accounts; or
  • to manage their Instagram and Facebook accounts separately so that their information is no longer used across accounts.

The same option is being introduced for Messenger:

People using Facebook Messenger can choose whether they wish to continue using Facebook Messenger with their Facebook account, or if they would prefer to create a stand-alone new Messenger account. People who choose to create a new Messenger account without their Facebook information will be able to use Messenger’s core service offering such as private messaging and chat, voice and video calling.

Likewise Marketplace and Games.

As with the previous announcement about a subscription-based ad-free experience, these new options will be limited to Europe.

They will be available in Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Republic of Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland. The UK misses out as it is not a member of the EU nor EEA.

Photo by Azamat E on Unsplash

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Avatar for Ben Lovejoy Ben Lovejoy

Ben Lovejoy is a British technology writer and EU Editor for 9to5Mac. He’s known for his op-eds and diary pieces, exploring his experience of Apple products over time, for a more rounded review. He also writes fiction, with two technothriller novels, a couple of SF shorts and a rom-com!


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