This ruins Instagram for me entirely. The separation is part of what I enjoyed and needed.

This just makes me want to leave both platforms, not embrace them as one.

They aren't doing this for users. They're doing this so that they can stand in front of Congress and say "Well actually Facebook and Instagram aren't two separate things, they're really just 1 thing, so it's impossible for you to break us up into 2 companies, sorry!"

This is very true

what they fear most is

Instagram and Whatsapp getting split up from Facebook

And then it becoming a contest of

FB vs Instagram Vs Whatsapp

If they integrate them in, then they get two good side effects (the real intended effectS) in addition to 'easier for users'

A) Very hard to split it up, as it 'breaks the experience for the users

B) After the split the three companies are FORCED TO WORK TOGETHER

it becomes three companies sharing three shared products

*

Another fact that has to be considered is

A lot of Instagram's growth was done leveraging what was learnt at Facebook and using Facebook users

Now you get the danger that

The three companies (if split - FB, Instagram, Whatsapp) could feed and grow competitors to each other

By having them so interconnected, it also prevents one company to 'build in' a possible competitor to another and grow it quickly

Personally I'm a huge fan. Instagram has never been for me. But it appears to be becoming a relatively popular IM tool. I thought I was going to have to install it on my phone at some point to communicate with friends but this lets me stick with the same one facebook app that I have been living with for years.

I can't wait until I can drop WhatsApp too.

I mean ideally people would start using something open like Matrix or even XMPP but I'll still take wins when I can get them. The less separate networks the better as far as I am concerned.

Big fan of this, hoping they integrate WhatsApp and its end to end encryption to this joint project soon as well

I think it's time to unlink my fb account from instagram. I really don't want the chats merged.

Thanks, I hate it

You are saying I'm a shill for wanting 1 instead of 3 Facebook apps to communicate with my network? Check my comment history, my website and my open source work. I'm clearly a real person who never liked Facebook.

In fact I'm fairly anti-facebook but not enough to move my friends to a different chat app (or a different 3). The network effect is strong.

Yes. Any one against your interests is a shill.

I also will enjoy the merging.

I don’t understand your last sentence. Facebook already controls most messaging.