Here&8217;s the deal with those Instagram DM updates you might have gotten

Instagram made some big changes recently. It replaced the "new post" button on the home screen with a link to its TikTok clone Reels. And, in an affront to everyone's muscle memory, it swapped out the notifications tab for a link to...shopping.

There's another change that you might have overlooked. The paper airplane icon for Instagram DMs is no more. It's been replaced with the logo for  Facebook Messenger, because Instagram DMs are now integrated with Messenger. 

What the heck does that mean? If you only just updated Instagram recently, you might have gotten an additional pop-up notification asking if you would like to "update" to the "new way to message on Instagram." If Instagram users choose to enable the change, they can send a DM to someone on Facebook within Instagram, even if that person doesn't have an account on Instagram. The same is true the other way around. Read more...