6 ms·

They seem to go about these things in the wrong way. Take Messenger for example, there was no good reason to remove access to this via a browser on mobile devic

by jaitsu 10y ago

They seem to go about these things in the wrong way. Take Messenger for example, there was no good reason to remove access to this via a browser on mobile devices. I don't want to have to install an app for something that was previously available in a browser. If you can't provide me with all of the features of messenger in the browser then that's fine. I thought we were meant to be progressing towards a truly open web accessible to all, regardless of device. This is just another example of Facebook doing whatever they please just because they can. I wonder how long that will last until people start moving away from the platform.

vwcx 10y ago
I've never installed Facebook Messenger and only access facebook through a mobile browser. What functionality am I missing out on?
- Spooky23 10y ago
  A recent TechCrunch article reported that the functionality that you use is going away. It's a hamfisted move. They abuse these apps to do something -- my wife tried the messenger app and discovered a noticeable loss of battery life. I think she uninstalled it within 24 hours.
  - notifier2050 10y ago
    I uninstalled both Facebook and Facebook Messenger apps from my Nexus 9 and it's become much faster. Can say that I am surprised.
  - parthdesai 10y ago
    For me personally, it has gone away. I used to own Moto g ( 1 gb ram version) so there was no way i could afford to have messenger and facebook app installed on my phone. I budged and installed messenger when i bought nexus 6P though.
    - zem 10y ago
      mbasic.facebook.com still has access to messages, if you want to uninstall messenger
      - StavrosK 10y ago
        Thank you for that. I had told everyone to message me on WhatsApp, and resigned to just be ignoring their messages until I was at a computer again. This will help.
  - petecox 10y ago
    I tried the Facebook apps and they were slow, buggy and intrusive. Messaging from the mobile web page was fine... Message to monetizing corporations - Sorry, all I want is a 4.5" web page downscaled from 21". It's all just CSS, right? And this is why I signed up to the dream and bought a Mozilla device with Firefox OS; alas the hardware died around the time the OS was orphaned. I use a handful of apps on my phone regularly and they're mainly for metropolitan services and web pages that refuse to reskin their sites for small screens. Nothing that couldn't be accomplished in HTML5 and with decent coding would probably run better than the current impls.
- tikhonj 10y ago
  Facebook chat. They're disabling it on the mobile website to push people towards Messenger. It's only a problem if people you know use that to chat.
shopkins 10y ago
> I wonder how long that will last until people start moving away from the platform. I think we'll need a solid alternative first. What would people want in the "next Facebook" anyway? Easy contact with every old classmate, friend, and family member? A place for their photos? An easy way to invite anyone to an event? I would wait for that day, but personally my use of FB has majorly changed over the past 10 years on it and now I get more utility out of smaller, more focused services. I think Facebook is trying to do the Google thing and have a bunch of discrete services under their umbrella, though they don't seem to have a clue how to do that. At least they're smart enough to buy up products that their alienated users will start running to.
- notifier2050 10y ago
  I hope they won't screw WhatsApp up, since it's pretty minimalistic and nice app.
  - mixedCase 10y ago
    They have enabled E2E encryption, so I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt that they won't screw it up like they have everything else.
  - vonuebelgarten 10y ago
    They are the dominant player in this market, I simply can't understand why they didn't crewed it already. I can only speculate: it's because WhatsApp is giving them an always-updated social graph of a billion people right now (including inferred information on people who, like me, didn't install the application but whose numbers are in the contacts books of people who did it) and crossing this information with FB data brings more revenue than anything they can do with WhatsApp itself.
- rpgmaker 10y ago
  > I think Facebook is trying to do the Google thing and have a bunch of discrete services under their umbrella, though they don't seem to have a clue how to do that. I think they're doing fine, by their metric. People are not going to abandon their services anytime soon. Me and other HN users may complain but the rest of the world doesn't care.
rpgmaker 10y ago
> I thought we were meant to be progressing towards a truly open web accessible to all, regardless of device. Not at all. It's the other way around actually. I think Silicon Valley, out of sheer pettiness, has betrayed the principles that were supposed to guide the WWW.
tobtoh 10y ago
> If you can't provide me with all of the features of messenger in the browser then that's fine. And I'd also prefer if they don't try and hijack other features. I had installed Messenger, but had notifications turned off because I don't care to be interrupted every time someone sends me a new message when I'm not actively participating in the chat. Today, someone tried to call me (as in voice call), via the Messenger app. Because notifications were turned off, I didn't realise they had tried to call even though I had the phone with me at the time because it's treated as a 'data' call via Messenger rather than a real phone call. Given that I can't separate the functionality of 'text chatting' from 'phone calls' made in Messenger, I've now uninstalled it so friends can't pseudo-call me via Messenger.
- jbkrule 10y ago
  Uh, what did you expect? If you turn off notifications to an application of course you won't be notified, regardless of what communication tactics are used in the app. That seems to be your fault for assuming otherwise. Unless there was specifically a button in the app for turning off notifications only for texts.
  - tobtoh 10y ago
    I expected Messenger would just handle chat messages (ie a direct replacement for my web-based FB chat). That it also would re-route voice calls was not expected, but I don't blame it for that. I do blame it that it doesn't give me the option to disable that functionality. I do not want phone calls to be routed via Messenger ever - yet you have no ability to separate that functionality.
    - prutschman 10y ago
      What will happen if that same person tries calling you through Messenger now that you've removed the program?
    - quarterto 10y ago
      Your friend chose to contact you via Facebook Messenger, for whatever reason. It didn't "reroute" anything. Phone calls are phone calls. If they'd actually rung you instead of using Facebook Messenger, your phone would still have rung.
SixSigma 10y ago
Not only that but the list of permissions for the app is vastly greater than the list I am willing to allow them. I use Firefox so I can just his "pretend to be a desktop browser" and respond to messages.
nojvek 10y ago
I believe they've already started. None of my real friends are active on FB anymore. My feed is just pages and ads that I never see. Snapchat and whatsapp is the primary means of social life. Facebook seems like Google now: growth by buying startups.
kahnpro 10y ago
> I thought we were meant to be progressing towards a truly open web accessible to all, regardless of device. I have some bad news for you...
robogrowth 10y ago
I gave up my Facebook 3 years ago and never looked back.
awqrre 10y ago
Instead of removing the web messenger app, they should have made it harder to use then the mobile app... like many companies do.
rodgerd 10y ago
> This is just another example of Facebook doing whatever they please just because they can. Given their claimed user base, their dominance in social networking and social-networking-as-a-platform, and this sort of behaviour ("Use our new app OR WE'LL DELETE YOUR STUFF!") they seem ripe for anti-trust action.

by jaitsu 10y ago

vwcx 10y ago

I've never installed Facebook Messenger and only access facebook through a mobile browser. What functionality am I missing out on?

Spooky23 10y ago
A recent TechCrunch article reported that the functionality that you use is going away. It's a hamfisted move. They abuse these apps to do something -- my wife tried the messenger app and discovered a noticeable loss of battery life. I think she uninstalled it within 24 hours.
- notifier2050 10y ago
  I uninstalled both Facebook and Facebook Messenger apps from my Nexus 9 and it's become much faster. Can say that I am surprised.
- parthdesai 10y ago
  For me personally, it has gone away. I used to own Moto g ( 1 gb ram version) so there was no way i could afford to have messenger and facebook app installed on my phone. I budged and installed messenger when i bought nexus 6P though.
  - zem 10y ago
    mbasic.facebook.com still has access to messages, if you want to uninstall messenger
    - StavrosK 10y ago
      Thank you for that. I had told everyone to message me on WhatsApp, and resigned to just be ignoring their messages until I was at a computer again. This will help.
- petecox 10y ago
  I tried the Facebook apps and they were slow, buggy and intrusive. Messaging from the mobile web page was fine... Message to monetizing corporations - Sorry, all I want is a 4.5" web page downscaled from 21". It's all just CSS, right? And this is why I signed up to the dream and bought a Mozilla device with Firefox OS; alas the hardware died around the time the OS was orphaned. I use a handful of apps on my phone regularly and they're mainly for metropolitan services and web pages that refuse to reskin their sites for small screens. Nothing that couldn't be accomplished in HTML5 and with decent coding would probably run better than the current impls.
tikhonj 10y ago
Facebook chat. They're disabling it on the mobile website to push people towards Messenger. It's only a problem if people you know use that to chat.

shopkins 10y ago

> I wonder how long that will last until people start moving away from the platform. I think we'll need a solid alternative first. What would people want in the "next Facebook" anyway? Easy contact with every old classmate, friend, and family member? A place for their photos? An easy way to invite anyone to an event? I would wait for that day, but personally my use of FB has majorly changed over the past 10 years on it and now I get more utility out of smaller, more focused services. I think Facebook is trying to do the Google thing and have a bunch of discrete services under their umbrella, though they don't seem to have a clue how to do that. At least they're smart enough to buy up products that their alienated users will start running to.

notifier2050 10y ago
I hope they won't screw WhatsApp up, since it's pretty minimalistic and nice app.
- mixedCase 10y ago
  They have enabled E2E encryption, so I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt that they won't screw it up like they have everything else.
- vonuebelgarten 10y ago
  They are the dominant player in this market, I simply can't understand why they didn't crewed it already. I can only speculate: it's because WhatsApp is giving them an always-updated social graph of a billion people right now (including inferred information on people who, like me, didn't install the application but whose numbers are in the contacts books of people who did it) and crossing this information with FB data brings more revenue than anything they can do with WhatsApp itself.
rpgmaker 10y ago
> I think Facebook is trying to do the Google thing and have a bunch of discrete services under their umbrella, though they don't seem to have a clue how to do that. I think they're doing fine, by their metric. People are not going to abandon their services anytime soon. Me and other HN users may complain but the rest of the world doesn't care.

rpgmaker 10y ago

> I thought we were meant to be progressing towards a truly open web accessible to all, regardless of device. Not at all. It's the other way around actually. I think Silicon Valley, out of sheer pettiness, has betrayed the principles that were supposed to guide the WWW.

tobtoh 10y ago

> If you can't provide me with all of the features of messenger in the browser then that's fine. And I'd also prefer if they don't try and hijack other features. I had installed Messenger, but had notifications turned off because I don't care to be interrupted every time someone sends me a new message when I'm not actively participating in the chat. Today, someone tried to call me (as in voice call), via the Messenger app. Because notifications were turned off, I didn't realise they had tried to call even though I had the phone with me at the time because it's treated as a 'data' call via Messenger rather than a real phone call. Given that I can't separate the functionality of 'text chatting' from 'phone calls' made in Messenger, I've now uninstalled it so friends can't pseudo-call me via Messenger.

jbkrule 10y ago
Uh, what did you expect? If you turn off notifications to an application of course you won't be notified, regardless of what communication tactics are used in the app. That seems to be your fault for assuming otherwise. Unless there was specifically a button in the app for turning off notifications only for texts.
- tobtoh 10y ago
  I expected Messenger would just handle chat messages (ie a direct replacement for my web-based FB chat). That it also would re-route voice calls was not expected, but I don't blame it for that. I do blame it that it doesn't give me the option to disable that functionality. I do not want phone calls to be routed via Messenger ever - yet you have no ability to separate that functionality.
  - prutschman 10y ago
    What will happen if that same person tries calling you through Messenger now that you've removed the program?
  - quarterto 10y ago
    Your friend chose to contact you via Facebook Messenger, for whatever reason. It didn't "reroute" anything. Phone calls are phone calls. If they'd actually rung you instead of using Facebook Messenger, your phone would still have rung.

SixSigma 10y ago

Not only that but the list of permissions for the app is vastly greater than the list I am willing to allow them. I use Firefox so I can just his "pretend to be a desktop browser" and respond to messages.

nojvek 10y ago

I believe they've already started. None of my real friends are active on FB anymore. My feed is just pages and ads that I never see. Snapchat and whatsapp is the primary means of social life. Facebook seems like Google now: growth by buying startups.

kahnpro 10y ago

> I thought we were meant to be progressing towards a truly open web accessible to all, regardless of device. I have some bad news for you...

robogrowth 10y ago

I gave up my Facebook 3 years ago and never looked back.

awqrre 10y ago

Instead of removing the web messenger app, they should have made it harder to use then the mobile app... like many companies do.

rodgerd 10y ago

> This is just another example of Facebook doing whatever they please just because they can. Given their claimed user base, their dominance in social networking and social-networking-as-a-platform, and this sort of behaviour ("Use our new app OR WE'LL DELETE YOUR STUFF!") they seem ripe for anti-trust action.