Facebook-owned photo-sharing platform Instagram is no longer allowing users to add deep links to rival social media sites such as Snapchat and Telegram, which is a potential indicator that Facebook is starting to get nervous about certain sites that aim to dethrone it from its reign as monarch among social networks.
The two social networking sites find themselves in the crosshairs of Facebook's Instagram service just weeks after Telegram reported minor censorship among users of Facebook's WhatsApp messenger, which coincidentally lost ground to Telegram in the wake of earlier outages.
Before, the website section in a users' Instagram bio was the only place on the network where they were allowed to deep link to other parts of the Internet, including other social media sites. But now, Instagram users who try to set their profile URL in that section to link to either a Telegram or Snapchat page will receive an error message that says: "Links asking someone to add you on another service aren't supported on Instagram."
The issue was highlighted by Telegram, who took to Twitter to complain about the development, calling Facebook's move "hypocrisy."
Another @Facebook tentacle closes on users' ability to share a link to their Telegram profile. #hypocrisy pic.twitter.com/xC6ydp3M0p
— Telegram Messenger (@telegram) March 2, 2016
For its part, Instagram confirmed the change in a statement, but didn't mention why the changes were made in the first place. "We've removed the ability to include 'add me' links on Instagram profile pages," said a spokesman. "This was a rare use-case, and not the way our platform was intended to be used. Other types of links are still allowed."
The story is similar to what Instagram itself went through back in 2012. At the time, Twitter blocked the fledging social media network from using the "find friends" feature on its API, citing concerns that users were exporting their following lists to Instagram in a bid to leave Twitter permanently.
Twitter's concerns proved to be sound in the end: now Instagram has about 400 million monthly active users while Twitter has 320 million. With that in mind, it's hardly surprising that the cycle has repeated and now Instagram is the one doing the blocking. Who's to say that Telegram or Snapchat won't do the same sometime in the future?
