Messenger Platform Policy Overview
The Messenger Platform’s policies are designed to help people and businesses connect effectively through Messenger to achieve meaningful outcomes. At the heart of this is the understanding that people and businesses need a seamless, reliable way to get something done - whether it is getting a question answered, making a purchase, or communicating important and relevant updates. We know people expect businesses to respond quickly, and businesses who respond to users' messages faster see better business outcomes. The policies are designed to encourage businesses and developers to:
- Respond to customers in a timely fashion when they reach out
- Share important updates that are personally relevant to their customers
Contents
Overview of Platform Policy
Here is an overview of our standard messaging, message tag, and news messaging policies. For complete details on applicable policies, please see the Facebook Platform Policy.
Standard Messaging - Businesses will have up to 24 hours to respond to a user. Messages sent within the 24 hour window may contain promotional content. We know people expect businesses to respond quickly, and businesses that respond to users in a timely manner achieve better outcomes. We highly encourage businesses to respond to people’s messages as soon as possible.
Message Tags - Enable businesses to send important and personally relevant 1:1 updates to users outside the 24 hour Standard messaging window. We provide 4 message tags to support certain use cases. The message tags include a Human Agent tag (in Closed Beta) that allow businesses to manually respond to user messages within a 7 day period. Learn more here.
One-time Notification - Enable businesses to request a user to send one follow-up message after a 24-hour messaging window has ended. Learn more here
News messaging - Only Pages that are registered with the Facebook News Page Index (NPI) will be allowed to send non-promotional news messages. Due to the global COVID-19 pandemic, select nongovernmental health organizations that are fundamental to the global fight against this disease and Governmental Health Entities that enable messaging, support and services for the treatment of this global health crisis may temporarily be allowed to use this permission to provide messages directly related to the global health crisis. Note that access is limited and subject to Facebook approval; all policies including spam rates, Platform Policies, and Community Standards apply; we reserve the right to remove access at any time; and to set additional criteria including restricted usage above and beyond our existing policy set.
Sponsored messages - Sponsored messages allow businesses to send promotional content outside the standard messaging window.
Standard Messaging
Businesses will have up to 24 hours to respond to a user. Messages sent within the 24-hour window may contain promotional content. Users have the option to block or mute a conversation with a business at any time.
Here are examples of the user actions that open the 24 hour Standard Messaging window:
- User sends a message to the Page
- User clicks a call-to-action button like Get Started within a Messenger conversation
- User clicks on a Click-to-Messenger ad and then starts a conversation with the Page
- User starts a conversation with a Page via a plugin, such as Send to Messenger plugin or the Checkbox plugin.
- User clicks on an m.me link with a ref parameter on an existing thread
- User reacts to a message. See Replies and Reactions
For information on how you may be able to send messages outside the 24-hour messaging window, see Message Tags, and Sponsored messages.
One-time Notification
Messenger Platform's One-Time Notification API (Beta) allows a page to send a time-sensitive and personally relevant notification for use cases (e.g. back in stock alert) where someone has explicitly requested to receive a one-time follow up message. Once the user asks to be notified, the page will receive a token which is an equivalent to a permission to send a single message to the user. The token can only be used once and will expire within 1 year of creation. Learn more here
Private Replies
When users create a Post Comment or a Visitor Posts on a Page, Private Replies allows the Page to send a single message as a reply. Private replies are currently allowed within 7 days of the referenced user action. Along with the message sent, the user will also receive a reference to their Post Comment or Visitor Posts.
Message Tags
Message tags enable sending important and personally relevant updates to users outside the 24-hour Standard messaging window, for a set of approved use cases. For complete details on allowed use cases, see the list of supported Message Tags. Use of tags outside of approved use cases may result in restrictions on your ability to send messages.
News Messaging
News messages allow news publishers to send regular news updates to their subscribers in Messenger. This feature is only available for registered news Pages under the Facebook News Page Index (NPI). Pages registered with the News Page Index don’t need to apply for news messaging permission.
News messaging apply to news content only, and must not be used for promotional content, including but not limited to subscription offers, deals, coupons, discounts or content produced by or that promotes a third party (e.g., branded content, affiliate marketing). To send news messages, NPI registered pages need to use the NON_PROMOTIONAL_SUBSCRIPTION message tag. Use of news messaging outside of these approved use cases may result in restrictions on your ability to send news messages.
Due to the global COVID-19 pandemic, select nongovernmental health organizations that are fundamental to the global fight against this disease and Governmental Health Entities that enable messaging, support and services for the treatment of this global health crisis may temporarily be allowed to use this permission to provide messages directly related to the global health crisis. Note that access is limited and subject to Facebook approval; all policies including spam rates, Platform Policies and Community Standards apply; we reserve the right to remove access at any time; and to set additional criteria including restricted usage above and beyond our existing policy set.
Sponsored Messaging
Sponsored messages allow businesses to reengage with people who have an open conversation with their Page in Messenger. Sponsored messages can be sent outside the 24-hour standard messaging window and can include both promotional and non-promotional content. Sponsored messages are annotated in the conversation with the word 'Sponsored' above the message.
Sponsored message content must comply with Facebook advertising policies.
For more information on sending sponsored messages, see Sponsored messages
