I have not found any news article on this on a whim. Because my friends and family, I need to use Facebook Messenger, and Messenger Lite was a OK client - lightweight, no unnecessary features, etc., compared to the regular Messenger app.
Now I’m a little torn, having a Meta app on my phone is already bad, but having to downgrade to the bloated Messenger app? Not sure I will make a change. What are your thoughts?
Ever since Facebook forced the separate Messenger app, I’ve refused to install it. Instead, when I see a message notification, I pop into a browser, head to Facebook.com and push the desktop version. While it’s clunky, I’ve never had to download Messenger.
Separate messaging app was the best thing they ever did. I’ve not had Facebook installed since.
Same. This will change nothing for me. I refuse their bullshit.
You’re still using their shit, just in a very inconvenient way. In fact, you’re going to their site that contains targeted ads rather than using an ad free app. What a strange hill to die on.
I have exactly one group that insists on communicating this way. Which is why this isn’t a big inconvenience for me. Your point is well taken, but doesn’t really apply in my case. I’m not a user of the service, which is why it’s so easy for me to refuse to install it, and hopefully I can use this to pressure the group to move to discord or some other means of communication. But if not I will continue to use the desktop site rather than install an app.
I’m in the exact same position as you and take the same approach. It’s a hill I’m getting a mildly stubbed toe on.
I’d rather have a slight inconvenience of seeing their ads on their website for the few moments I’d need to send a message than having their spyware of an app tracking everything I do all day long.
Not only is that not possible on both Android and iPhone nowadays, that’s a myth that’s never been remotely proven.
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Yeah, none of that means they’re tracking everything you do all day long.
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Man, this is the single most ignorant comment I’ve seen regarding Facebook. You’ve never wondered how a company that offers a free product makes billions?
If that list didn’t have anything on it except “location”, I’d still say that you’re wrong about them not tracking you. How can you read all of the other things on that list and not realize that selling your data is how they make money?
Why? I mean it’s much better to have the messenger app without all the facebook BS.
Its very easy to disregard facebook in 2023, but Messenger is still one of the more prominent messaging app.
https://mbasic.facebook.com/ still works. It’s missing some modern niceties, but usable. That’s what I use for occasional messages.
https://www.messenger.com/ also works (requires to be running as desktop version). Still not ideal but works.
I hate to say this, but Facebook Messenger is one of the most fully featured messaging apps. It has its own internal messaging standard that offers iMessage like features between Facebook users, and it also is one of the better SMS apps out there.
I can see why they make it its own app, it’s supposed to replace other messaging apps.
Same here. I wish Disa messenger app was maintained as it was my one stop shop for a few messenger apps.
I wish someone discontinued Meta
Too bad Threads hasn’t entered the Fediverse, things could’ve been easier.
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I’ll die before I install Facebook Messenger
Same. Just have to hold out until the EU makes all messaging apps cross+operable and then I’ll be able to talk to everyone again.
Careful. They could be listening.
I hope they are.
Hey Facebook, eat a bag of dicks!
A whole bag of them!
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Everyone in my family 😞
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Again, who tf uses messenger?
The entire nation of Poland
Not me
Wait you’re not an entire nation are you?
I just like to be proud of improving digital space around me
In our country, texting (through the built-in Messenger app) is mostly done as an emergency measure, as most people here use Meta’s other messaging app, WhatsApp.
You’d rather be spied on by your carrier… Got it.
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Fair enough.
Personally, I don’t like using 30 year old technology to communicate. I avoid phone calls and I generally avoid SMS and it’s derivatives.
I work in IT and generally demand more from my messaging apps. I still avoid FB like the plague though.
Carrier can’t spy on you if iMessage and signal!
Which are both not SMS/texting. I know iMessage falls back to SMS if the number doesn’t have iMessage, which is where the carrier spying comes in.
Instead for iMessage, it’s Apple spying, and for signal it’s… Shrug
I trust iMesssge’s e2e and Apple’s privacy a fuckovalot more than anything Facebook has ever made.
That’s fine. I trust Google’s chat app more than SMS, and others, it’s all personal preference. The point of my comment was to demonstrate that no matter what you’re using, someone has your data and is likely selling it.
If you trust apple enough to use their service, all the power to you. If you trust signal/telegram/element/whatever, that’s cool too. But no matter what service you’re using, if it’s a free public service, your data is the product. It is, in all likelihood, being sold to someone somewhere.
It’s a personal choice for how much risk you’re willing to accept on that front. Bluntly, I don’t think anyone should trust FB or any of suckerberg’s properties. Everyone else is varying levels of shit. Some much worse than others… The decisions made beyond that point are personal.
And frankly, if someone almost exclusively uses FB messenger, it says to me that they don’t give any shits about their data or what happens to it. Everything else, meh. There’s good and bad from most companies, some are doing better (signal, as an example, seems to be doing pretty good), others, not so great… Meh.
Same.
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Over 3 billion users combined.
So, to answer your question: “Nearly everybody.”
That’s overly dramatic, we’re over 8 billion already… so it’s “Nearly half of everybody” 😜
Facebook is the main social media in Africa. It’s not a bommer thing there, everyone use it.
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At least a billion people
Only the stupidest of humanity.
Well, there goes central Europe
I swear my battery life improved after I uninstalled messenger for a while and got worse after reinstalling recently.
I wouldn’t have installed it except I was in the process of getting back in touch with a few old friends. Was totally worth it for that.
I’ve found the same thing with the IG and FB apps which is why I don’t use them. I stick to the mobile web versions but they have made it difficult to message from the android mobile web without extra steps like desktop mode. Even then there can be missing functionality.
There was also an article earlier this year where they were purposely “testing” the apps that forcibly drained some user batteries quickly without a care for the actual users affected. Since I’m often using my phone for navigation in the woods I want as much battery life as possible please.
Anyways if it wasn’t for older friends and family members I would no longer be using FB.
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Certainly a argument can be made for this. For me it is the extended family and contacts from hobbies /sports. Without FB they would have completely faded out of my life. This low level method maintains a loose family connections once maintained by the senior family members that have long since passed. As for the others yes completely disappear from your life…
Of course it did. They’re tracking everything you do, and everywhere you go, even when the app isn’t running. Don’t believe me? Install the Duck Duck Go browser and enable App Tracking Protection. You will be shocked by the amount of shit so many apps track in the background, but Facebook is one of the worst.
Install Telegram (or Signal before everyone downvotes me) for your family & friends. For me most of my friends & relatives migrated to it and using for chats between themselves.
Bonus if you are good at programming and can make some very unique telegram bots that do some interesting stuff, like reporting local news.
Unfortunately FB Messenger is the defacto way to communicate in some countries - if I refused to use it I’d fail uni as I wouldn’t be able to communicate with group members, I wouldn’t be able to contact most of my family, and the number of friends I can talk to would drop to about 5 (of which most have recently had children and are thus a bit preoccupied)
I use Telegram every day, but without end-to-end encryption (by default and on groups), it’s as private as Facebook Messenger. They can read everything. The only difference is that currently people trust them more than they trust Facebook, but everything turns to shit eventually.
If Signal is too “boring” or no one uses it in your circles, try WhatsApp. Yes, it’s also from Meta, but at least comms are encrypted (same protocol as Signal) and a lot of people use it.
You (op) use telegram, and make a relay bot that redirects messages to/from fb messenger. You use the app of your choice, and they use the app of theirs. Big downside, is you’re still reliant on fb for messages.
Can you even make a messenger bot? Last time I checked it had bots, but they were incredibly crappy.
I know of someone who made one a while back, but I don’t know if it would work with the current version of messenger. It’d be a fun project to figure that out, though. I’ll add it to the growing list of fun projects haha
This sucks.
Can’t ditch it completely due to family, but got a few more contacts over on Signal after this announcement.
Just log in to Facebook on desktop every couple of days. If they want speedy responses, they will know yto try an aternative medium.
I don’t use Facebook so I don’t know -
Why can’t you just have a group text with your family.
Because SMS doesn’t support group chats and MMS is expensive garbage (50c/300kb is fucked)
Just gonna leave this here: https://www.signal.org/
Well, family at least is going to be willing to switch to signal…
Why still use Facebook when we have the Internet?
Old people are there, some we care about, some have passed away…
There are a few decent communities out there too. Not many, but a few.
In many countries it’s the default communication app
Marketplace became the defacto replacement for craigslist in my area 😔
It’s the only reason I use it and, as much as I hate to admit it, it’s really well done/seamless/painless to use. Literally the only good think on FB (until they inevitably ruin it too). Has fantastic consumer protections.
The only and I say the only good thing I can say about Facebook Messenger is… umm…
Can somebody name at least one thing? Really, this app is shit but we must find one at least.
Yes, people using it as the main messaging app is still preferable to the situation in the US where people on different mobile platforms can’t message each other without bullshit compatibility issues and bubble colors.
At least here it doesn’t matter what platform you’re on - including desktops and the web - and as a result nobody cares.
Of course, the same is true for almost every other messaging service too, and there are better ones out there.
Facebook Messenger is probably the closest thing to a modern Yellow Pages as we have. Not everybody is on there, but most people are - even if they haven’t checked their profile in years. With the fall of landlines, it can be the easiest (or only) way to find/contact someone - especially if you’re a GenX or early Millennial because we have all dropped out landlines, but we created most of our social connections before any other messaging service existed. Heck, almost none of the people I knew from college in the 90s even had an email address that they stuck with (assuming I actually had email logs going back thirty years). It’s nice that so many message services exist, but most have no way to “look someone up” the way it’s possible to do on something like messenger/fb. (admittedly - it’s both good and bad)
I suppose there’s a chance that LinkedIn is the other major database of real names out there; I’ve never tried it for locating people.
Back when people used Facebook, it was a convenient way to connect people to chats quickly and easily. I don’t think that’s the case anymore though.
It isn’t. Adding someone is always digging through people with the same name and searching for “that one with glasses on profile picture”. There are some codes to scan, but they are Facebook’s custom format incompatible with QR code scanners and inconvinient to use.
Some of my late mum’s friends only use Facebook. Not saying it’s ideal, but… a single good thing, right?
I can’t uninstall the Facebook app from my phone (not unless I use ADB), so it’s disabled. I uninstalled Messenger. I pinned a post on my FB page that said if people needed to contact me they can email me or text me. I have posted about why folks should leave these platforms until I am blue in the face. If they want to make the switch, they will. If they want to reach out, they will.
Eventually, I want to get an unlocked phone, load a custom ROM, and tell the big platforms to fuck off. I resent how difficult they have made that, and I resent how complacent we have become because of it.
Most phones can be unlocked provided you own it. Easier than you might think!
Carrier unlocked and oem bootloader unlocking are two very different things.
In canada, all phones must now be free of carrier locks, but bootloader unlocking is a pain. The us version of my current phone can be oem unlocked.
Mine can’t.
So, i use a lot of adb/shizuku
If I can get a custom ROM to work on my current phone, I’m all for it! I was looking at specific unlocked phone brands because some custom ROMS are optimized for that hardware.
Check out the XDA Forums section for your carrier’s version of whatever model of phone you have. Not all carriers make it trivial (or even possible) to unlock the bootloader and flash custom recovery images, but if it’s possible then someone there has certainly done it.
Thank you for this!
My next phone will be a pixel so I can flash grapheneOS on it. I don’t think my Snapdragon S21 can run custom firmware without triggering Samsung Knox though
Your phone came with Facebook installed and you can’t uninstall it? Fucking gross! Which phone is that so I know to never buy it?
This could be true of basically any Android phone on specific carriers, at least in the US.
I guess I’ll always stick with the Pixel Pro then.
Sony for one. My Xperia One III (a fucking $1300 or whatever flagship) comes with a completely uninstallable Facebook apk
Just delete every meta/fb app. There are plenty of alternatives now. They will never love you.
If people are still playing within meta’s walls they are lost and won’t be leaving anytime soon.
But all my friends are on there! M-m-my followers!!!
They didn’t miss the boat, they straight up ignored it. Nothing has changed so why should their poorly reasoned decision?
Or install an app called Metal.
It’s a wrapper for the mobile webpage with all the intrusive permissions disabled by default.
I just looked for this app and it looks like it hasn’t been updated since 2018. Am I wrong?
On the play store page I got the message “not available on your device, this app has been designed for an older version of Android”, not updated since June 2018 and I can’t find it anywhere else, seems you’re not
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Here’s an idea. Stop using FB.
I get it, your boomer parents/grandparents don’t know how to use anything else… But you can show them. It’s very similar and doesn’t suck as much.
I understand this move from FB too… Rather than maintain two apps, that both do the same thing, just maintain one. However, without the ability to turn off all the bloat and crap in the one app to make it very similar to the other, I don’t see that being viable for many, and I’m sure they don’t let you do that, so, ha ha, get fucked.
Anyways, Facebook is a cancer.
Family is not the problem, everyone else is.
Matrix with a facebook messenger bridge? I know just the one finnish instance that offers bridging (pikaviestin.fi), though. I host my own home server.
This probably won’t work for long since they’re rolling out E2EE for Messenger.
It works with whatsapp.
Oh so it’s just basically a different UI over WhatsApp?
No. Due to how whatsapp works, you have to have a phone with whatsapp installed, somewhere.
The matrix bridge connects to that, and “puppets” your account, bringin those chats into your matrix account.
Matrix can bridge to a ton of different chat services, but each one can work a little differently. They usually don’t support voice and video.
Matrix is what’s behind the scenes for beeper, for example.
Ahh gotcha. Sounds neat!
Users need to install regular Messenger app instead
No, they don’t.
Lol yeah not gonna happen.
