Facebook and Instagram Activate NFTs for US Users

Social media giant Meta has announced that everyone in the US using its Facebook and Instagram platforms can now connect their wallets and share their “digital collectibles.”

Per the announcement made on Thursday, this includes the ability for people to cross-post non-fungible tokens (NFTs) – or “digital collectibles” as they are referred to by Meta – that they own across these two major social media platforms.

Furthermore, “everyone in the 100 countries where digital collectibles are available on Instagram can now access the feature,” Meta said.

Everyone on @instagram and @facebook can now share their digital collectibles in the US, and on Instagram in the previously announced 100+ countries. Creators like artist Lívia Elektra are sharing their #NFTs on our apps. https://t.co/6yV4HgfHSW https://t.co/wa2wkWgfWX pic.twitter.com/fRi0wA7a6l

— Meta Newsroom (@MetaNewsroom) September 29, 2022

While many commenters online seem to welcome this decision, quite a few people also commented against it, criticizing the move, and expressing their distrust towards Meta specifically. Many others also had privacy-related concerns.

Cryptocurrency media personality, trader, and investor Ran Neuner tweeted that users that connect their wallets may actually be allowing access to their full crypto transaction history.

BREAKING: $META just announced that US users can connect their crypto wallets to their platforms to use NFT/Digital collectibles.

Also, if you connect your wallet they literally link your anonymous wallet to an identity (KYC) and get your entire crypto transaction history.

— Ran Neuner (@cryptomanran) September 29, 2022

Just a month ago, at the very end of August, Facebook announced that it started allowing users to post NFTs across both Facebook and Instagram. “This will enable people to connect their digital wallets once to either app in order to share their digital collectibles across both,” the team said.

In early August, the company stated that it began its international expansion to 100 countries in Africa, Asia-Pacific, the Middle East, and the Americas.

After the company started testing NFTs on Instagram back in May, in July, as reported, Meta enabled a group of US creators to show NFTs on their Facebook profiles.

Meanwhile, the supported blockchains include Ethereum (ETH), Polygon (MATIC), and Flow (FLOW), while an earlier post noted that Solana (SOL) would be coming as well. The third-party wallets compatible for use include Rainbow, MetaMask, Trust Wallet, Coinbase, and Dapper. Phantom is expected to be added.

“There will be no fees associated with posting or sharing a digital collectible on Instagram,” Meta said back in May.

Meanwhile, the latest NFT move comes as Meta stated that it would freeze hiring, restructure some teams, and reduce budget across most teams in an effort to cut costs, Fortune reported, citing an attendee at a weekly Q&A session with employees.

Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg was quoted as saying that “I had hoped the economy would have more clearly stabilized by now, but from what we’re seeing, it doesn’t yet seem like it has, so we want to plan somewhat conservatively.”

The CEO suggested that advertising revenue growth is slowing, and he stated that,

“For the first 18 years of the company, we basically grew quickly basically every year, and then more recently our revenue has been flat to slightly down for the first time.”

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