Facebook Messenger Privacy Updates for Europe

Facebook is activating new policies around its Messenger platform starting from 16th December 2020. These changes are being implemented to comply with the new privacy rules in Europe.

These updates will have an impact on Facebook Messenger chatbots that are linked to Facebook pages that are interacting with users in Europe.

Here’s a quick summary of what’s changing-

• Limited access to user profile information
• No carousels on the Web client
• Typing indicator from chatbots has been removed
• The persistent menu is no longer available
• File sharing is disabled from Facebook pages
• One-time notification is disabled
• Templates no longer available

You can refer to the official documentation here for more details

How does this impact you?

Please make relevant changes to your chatbots as mentioned below-

• Do not rely on user profile information from Messenger and explicitly ask for relevant information from the user
• Replace buttons with quick replies wherever applicable
• Add a response for the “menu” keyword with the options that were set for the persistent menu
• Remove carousels and replace them with a combination of text, images, and quick replies
• Avoid delay in responses since the typing indicator will not be available to show the processing state
• Ask for contact details instead of the one-time notification

References

Preparing for Messenger Updates in Europe – FAQs

Developer Documentation Page