How to prevent Instagram from publishing your posts on Facebook

Instagram and Facebook are closely related and are owned by the same parent company, Meta. But for some time now, the American giant has enabled messaging from Instagram to Facebook by default.

When you post on Instagram, you don’t expect to find your content on other sites or platforms. After all, you posted on Instagram, not Facebook. However, your Instagram posts end up on Facebook, to the surprise of many users who are not yet active on Facebook. But what exactly is happening?

The meta may have forced you to share your Instagram posts on Facebook.

According to The New York Times, this is due to a rather flawed Instagram strategy implemented last year. At some point, the app may have shown you a popup asking if you want your next Instagram posts to also be published on your Facebook page. If you don’t use Facebook or use very little, you can disable this option and leave your messages in the app you’re on. In this case, the specified option is a rather inconspicuous hyperlink, where the possibility of its activation is a large blue button.

And it turned out that a lot of people hit that button believing it would be the quickest way to close the popup faster, not realizing that they were committed to getting their Instagram posts to Facebook. And that’s exactly what Meta wanted: the company was extremely interested in increasing the number of users who share Instagram content on Facebook, and designed this pop-up in such a way that the majority of Instagram users give their consent (knowingly or not) to constant sharing. their posts and stories on Facebook.

If this function seems useful to someone, then for others it is completely unthinkable. For most users – and especially the smallest ones – Instagram is more of a platform for sharing with friends, while Facebook brings together the oldest. Rather, Facebook is more “formal”, there, of course, there may be friends, as well as members of your family, colleagues or former teachers. You probably don’t want to share the same content with these people as you would with those on Instagram.

To be clear, Facebook’s integration with Instagram has been around for a long time, long before the name change to Meta. The company, then Facebook, acquired Insta in 2012 for $1 billion and made it easy to host it on its Facebook page, as well as on Twitter, Tumblr and other apps. Last year, the American giant decided to trick its users into sharing content without explicitly telling them.

How to Disable Posting from Instagram to Facebook

Luckily, disabling this feature is pretty easy. Instagram includes a “Share to Facebook”button on the last page before a post is posted, but this option only disables sharing of the post in question. If you want to permanently disable sharing, this button will be enabled again the next time you post. The same goes for stories: you can tap and hold on Your Stories to disable Facebook sharing this time, but it will be enabled again next time.

To deactivate permanently, go to Settings > Account > Other App Sharing > Facebook. Turn off all AutoShare options, including Your Instagram Story, Your Instagram Posts, and if you use them, Your Instagram Reels. You will find a similar option on the post page. Click “More Settings”and you’ll find a “Share Your Posts on Facebook”button under Settings.