[spunker540]

Seems like a huge hit to the myriad business-to-consumer chat startups that sell premium messenger experiences to brands for customer service etc. It’s also a hit to any business who has invested in chat as a service/sales channel, assuming that all chat APIs will be subject to the same limitations.

These APIs that are being limited have very little to do with user privacy and mostly impact usability. For example it looks like handoffs between chat apps are no longer possible in Europe- a company could have an entry point chat bot that routes to a live human, or routes to an order-taking bot. That routing is no longer possible without the “handoff protocol”.

It looks like users can no longer send attachments to a business either. (Or rather they can still send the attachment, but the business can’t use the api to access it?). I don’t believe this is a win for users and just shows some unintended side effects of EU legislation.

[KIFulgore]

Unintended by the legislators, maybe, but I'd wager this punitive reaction by Facebook is very intentional. Many EU businesses are going to have their commerce and customer service flows break 9 days before Christmas. It will be interesting to see how much backlash from these businesses is leveled at the EU regulators and how much is directed toward getting off Facebook's platform.