Facebook Messenger users panic as recent update locks old chats with “no longer active” warning

A quiet Facebook Messenger update is suddenly locking people out of long‑running conversations, throwing up a new “This chat is no longer active” warning, and pushing users into a different encrypted thread instead. Reports on Reddit and Facebook groups say some people woke up to find years of messages with partners, friends, or even deceased family members effectively frozen overnight, sparking understandable panic.​​

In screenshots being shared, the regular chat shows a grey banner saying the conversation is no longer active because Messenger upgraded security, with a prompt to continue messaging in a separate end‑to‑end encrypted chat for that contact.

Users say they can still scroll through the old thread, but they can’t reply, react, or forward anything from it, making it feel less like a living chat and more like a locked archive.​​

Under the hood, this looks like the messy side of Meta’s long‑running push to make end‑to‑end encryption the default on Messenger, a rollout it first announced back in 2023. Meta’s own help page explains that when there are two chats with the same person — a regular one and an encrypted one — you have to pick which stays active, while the other becomes archived and read‑only. In other words, the app isn’t deleting your history, but it is quietly shuffling older, unencrypted threads into the background in favor of their encrypted twins.​

If this all sounds familiar, it’s because Messenger has been telegraphing the move for months with the “This chat will be archived soon” banner, which warned that only end‑to‑end encrypted threads would stay active. For a deeper breakdown of what that earlier alert meant and how it works, you can read this explainer on our sister site Tech Issues Today.

The problem is how abrupt this feels in real life. Some people say they updated the app, only to find their main thread archived and a separate encrypted chat suddenly taking over.

From a privacy standpoint, default encryption is absolutely the right direction, but the transition experience clearly isn’t there yet. If you’re caught in this, I wouldn’t rush to delete any chats; instead, check your archived inbox, verify which conversation is now marked as end‑to‑end encrypted, and consider downloading your Facebook data so you have a backup of important messages while Meta figures this out.

Given the timing — just days after Meta’s latest round of Facebook UI and creation tools tweaks — we’d be very surprised if the company doesn’t follow up with clearer messaging or a less alarming banner for people’s most important conversations.​​