7 ms·

Facebook really wants you to install Messenger on your phone, for some reason: https://brachistochr0ne.wordpress.com/2016/12/26/facebook-hates-mobile-unless-yo

Facebook really wants you to install Messenger on your phone, for some reason: https://brachistochr0ne.wordpress.com/2016/12/26/facebook-hates-mobile-unless-you-use-their-app/ https://brachistochr0ne.wordpress.com/2016/12/26/facebook-ha...

gukov 10y ago
Because messaging is the new web.
- smelendez 10y ago
  Yeah, menu-based chatbots are the closest they can get to third-party executable code in an iPhone app, and therefore the only way they can approach being a browser-like platform.
  - sulam 10y ago
    Nah, this isn't true. JS works fine now.
- prklmn 10y ago
  it's not, but facebook wants it to be
pasbesoin 10y ago
From my limited, anecdotal observations this past year (in the U.S.): (Facebook) Messenger is how people PM other people they've met when they haven't swapped phone numbers. I was at dinner with a friend. Because of unexpected circumstances, we ended up sharing a table with one of her friends and some people that friend was with. One of her friend's friends was quite gregarious and engaging towards my (non-romantic, by the way) friend. Seemed pretty obvious to me, at least. We get back to my friend's place, and this guy is IM-ing her on FB Messenger with a bunch of flattering and engaging texts. She didn't give him her number, despite his hints in the restaurant parking lot, but he readily found her on FB through their mutual friend/contact. (Who, by the way, told her, "Yeah, no... He was a jerk to me and you don't want to go there.") Sorry for the lengthy story. This friend of mine also went through an extended period of significant but not always close network building, this past year. And this is how much of that worked: Where phone numbers weren't shared, PM-ing through FB Messenger. Messenger is well on the way to becoming the de facto "public" venue for IM-ing. Other platforms tend to be turned to for more private, personal stuff -- at least among folks who actively use multiple platforms. P.S. Invasive as it is, and with all the reservations I have, you nonetheless have to give FB credit (as a self-interested business) for turning Messenger into this. And, privacy concerns and limitations aside, it pretty much "just works". Which is the definition of win and first choice, for most "ordinary" folks.
- parthdesai 10y ago
  I agree with you on that, but you dont messenger app to do that. Can easily do that from web or from m.facebook.com on firefox.
  - wattt 10y ago
    You might be interested in mbasic.facebook.com.
  - hornetblack 10y ago
    There is also m.messenger.com. Although trying that it seems the certificate isn't trusted by iOS Safari.
- daodedickinson 10y ago
  I've had people say they'll find me on Facebook and message me and when I tell them I don't have a Facebook they've said well, bye and left with out any interest in giving any other kind of contact info. It's where you put people politely when you don't really want to interact with them ever again but can't quite say that yet.
  - sverige 10y ago
    I suspect at least 50% of the people who ask decide I'm crazy or otherwise very suspect socially when I tell them I don't have Facebook (or Twitter or Snapchat or Instagram for that matter). This happens even with people I've known for a while. Apparently it's very unusual to be completely absent from social media.
    - nikanj 10y ago
      It's our generations version of "can I have your number?" "Sorry, I don't have a phone". Either it's a brush off, or they're a bit..different.
- dreamfactory2 10y ago
  Not seeing what's unique to fb messenger here. Any messaging platform like whatsapp, wechat, line etc is used this way
wattt 10y ago
Surprised it has not been mentioned yet, but mbasic.facebook.com would solve the issue in both articles. I don't even have a facebook account and I'm constantly referring people to the slimmer version. I guess they must not advertise it.
- em3rgent0rdr 10y ago
  there's also quite a few open-source apps on F-DROID which are merely wrappers around the mobile site. I've been using "FaceSlim" for a while.
- mr_spothawk 10y ago
  Thank you so much :) It's like old Facebook... and quite the reminder of how quickly our world changes.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- kevincox 10y ago
  That looks nice. I wonder if there is a way to set it as the preferred mobile site (for incoming links). That being said the mobile site is quite good anyways, so it's not a big issue for me.
- narrator 10y ago
  You can also enable "show desktop site" on Chrome android to get messenger to work again.
- mnadkvlb 10y ago
  Thanks. This is what i needed. FB on mobile browsers is usable again. They have intentionally crippled the mobile site if you want to chat, to have you install messenger, which is probably the worst app(/malware) i have seen.
- weinzierl 10y ago
  This approach doesn't work anymore (at least for me). I always get redirected to a page that prompts me to install Messenger.
hornetblack 10y ago
Just using facebook or just using messenger without the other is a pain. Also first time I used FB Messenger on a new phone (an iPhone after using android). Went through several screens of "Add your phone number", "Constantly upload all your contacts!" and "Invite your friends to messenger". all with well hidden ui for skipping each step (particularly the last one). If I wanted to contact people on messenger they would already have messenger.
- kevincox 10y ago
  Weird, on Android I have been using the messenger app without the FB app for years without any issue. As for the messenger setup the Android version definitely had all those screens but the skip button was very obvious.
- olyjohn 10y ago
  My favorite is on iOS. TURN ON NOTIFICATIONS. TURN ON NOTIFICATIONS. It asks you on every launch, and even puts a notification inside the app that stays there until you turn on notifications. So it always looks like you have a message from somebody. It never goes away.
cdelsolar 10y ago
Or maybe this excessively paranoid person could just install Messenger and realize that no one cares enough about him to turn on the two cameras and four microphones and GPS or whatever to spy on him all day.
BucketSort 10y ago
When I got aqainted with the APP, I knew right where they are going with it: facebook wants messenger to be their mobile application distribution system. Just look at how heavy the app is. It is way over engineered to simply be a messenger application. Facebook used to rake in money from facebook games. Who plays games on FB anymore? Web games were the largest games market in the world in the early FB era. I developed for some companies that had games and apps on FB. I was in the online freelance community at the time and a ton of money was poured into that. Now everything has gone mobile and they lost one of their gold mines.
developer2 10y ago
a) Users in developing countries want, even need, messaging apps without the bandwidth costs of a full social networking app. This isn't a Facebook "stunt", but rather the reality of trying to acquire users in countries without 3g/4g/wifi bandwidth at affordable costs for consumers. "Facebook Social Network" cannot compete with "WhatsApp" or similar in poor countries, but "Facebook Messenger" can. It's really not a hard concept to understand, unless one is so unaware of how lucky one is to live in a first world country with a steady income. b) It's funny how the HN crowd spins the separation of the messaging component from the rest of the product as a bad thing. When it comes to Unix, we repeatedly hear about how having separate smaller utilities to accomplish different tasks is the only right way to do things. But a company who splits their essential messaging component from the extremely heavy, unnecessary, optional, nice-to-have addons like a "wall" is somehow evil. A "messaging app" is a very tiny fraction of the functionality found in a "social networking app". It's extremely sensible to separate them. How anyone can even pretend to attribute this to some nefarious motive is beyond me. And hell, I'm an anti-Facebook nut.
- fit2rule 10y ago
  If Facebook Messenger only functioned as a way of sending and receiving Facebook messages to ones friends, your position would be justified. But in fact Messenger is a trojan horse app which spies on users and gathers much information about the systems its installed on, without user oversight, in order for Facebook to better profile its users. Fact: Messenger isn't a messaging app. It masquerades as one, because in reality its a user-profiling app, designed to serve one master, and one master only: Facebook. Not its users.
  - developer2 10y ago
    This has nothing to do with the separation of the Messenger app from the core Facebook app. When messaging was packaged as part of the core Facebook app, the functionality was the same. There is nothing Facebook can do with two separate apps that they couldn't have done with a single app. You can't tell me that "Facebook Messenger spies", but that "combined Facebook and Facebook Messenger apps wouldn't spy". And to be clear, "spying" simply means granting the app those privileges. You could complain about Apple's or Android's approaches to approving individual privileges, but it's not like Facebook is doing anything super illegitimate that users haven't had to permit - even if the reason for granting those privileges isn't fully disclosed.
algesten 10y ago
Before Apple put the address book contacts behind permissions, facebook downloaded the entire thing, without asking, to their servers. I know this, because I make a very clear distinction between work and non-work data, facebook is non-work, so I will never have colleagues or work related contacts on facebook. Suddenly one day, out of the blue, I get a facebook "friend suggestion" for a boss I had many years back. There's absolutely _no way_ there are any contact paths from my facebook friends to this person. The only thing I had done was (reluctantly) installing the facebook mobile app. I researched it and found other people had experienced the same thing. The app simply took your entire address book and started matching up "friends" using that. WhatsApp seems to do the same today. Facebook is an evil company that absolutely will take any data they can get their hands on.
- andreigheorghe 10y ago
  Have you considered that it might have happened the other way around? Your boss had you in their contacts list, allowed Facebook to import it, and the number / email he had matched your account, so Facebook then knew there's a likely connection between the two of you, suggesting the friendship to both of you?
  - tedunangst 10y ago
    No, no one ever considers a Facebook, LinkedIn, et al, suggestion started because the other party uploaded their contacts. It's only and always because their app spied on you, they hacked into your email, etc.
    - tracker1 10y ago
      Most of my suggestions seem to be people I either went to HS with (mutual contacts), or via FB groups... though there's the obvious bot requests, and an occasional wtf is that?
nameisu 10y ago
i got 5% battery back after uninstalling FB and messenger

gukov 10y ago

Because messaging is the new web.

smelendez 10y ago
Yeah, menu-based chatbots are the closest they can get to third-party executable code in an iPhone app, and therefore the only way they can approach being a browser-like platform.
- sulam 10y ago
  Nah, this isn't true. JS works fine now.
prklmn 10y ago
it's not, but facebook wants it to be

pasbesoin 10y ago

From my limited, anecdotal observations this past year (in the U.S.): (Facebook) Messenger is how people PM other people they've met when they haven't swapped phone numbers. I was at dinner with a friend. Because of unexpected circumstances, we ended up sharing a table with one of her friends and some people that friend was with. One of her friend's friends was quite gregarious and engaging towards my (non-romantic, by the way) friend. Seemed pretty obvious to me, at least. We get back to my friend's place, and this guy is IM-ing her on FB Messenger with a bunch of flattering and engaging texts. She didn't give him her number, despite his hints in the restaurant parking lot, but he readily found her on FB through their mutual friend/contact. (Who, by the way, told her, "Yeah, no... He was a jerk to me and you don't want to go there.") Sorry for the lengthy story. This friend of mine also went through an extended period of significant but not always close network building, this past year. And this is how much of that worked: Where phone numbers weren't shared, PM-ing through FB Messenger. Messenger is well on the way to becoming the de facto "public" venue for IM-ing. Other platforms tend to be turned to for more private, personal stuff -- at least among folks who actively use multiple platforms. P.S. Invasive as it is, and with all the reservations I have, you nonetheless have to give FB credit (as a self-interested business) for turning Messenger into this. And, privacy concerns and limitations aside, it pretty much "just works". Which is the definition of win and first choice, for most "ordinary" folks.

parthdesai 10y ago
I agree with you on that, but you dont messenger app to do that. Can easily do that from web or from m.facebook.com on firefox.
- wattt 10y ago
  You might be interested in mbasic.facebook.com.
- hornetblack 10y ago
  There is also m.messenger.com. Although trying that it seems the certificate isn't trusted by iOS Safari.
daodedickinson 10y ago
I've had people say they'll find me on Facebook and message me and when I tell them I don't have a Facebook they've said well, bye and left with out any interest in giving any other kind of contact info. It's where you put people politely when you don't really want to interact with them ever again but can't quite say that yet.
- sverige 10y ago
  I suspect at least 50% of the people who ask decide I'm crazy or otherwise very suspect socially when I tell them I don't have Facebook (or Twitter or Snapchat or Instagram for that matter). This happens even with people I've known for a while. Apparently it's very unusual to be completely absent from social media.
  - nikanj 10y ago
    It's our generations version of "can I have your number?" "Sorry, I don't have a phone". Either it's a brush off, or they're a bit..different.
dreamfactory2 10y ago
Not seeing what's unique to fb messenger here. Any messaging platform like whatsapp, wechat, line etc is used this way

wattt 10y ago

Surprised it has not been mentioned yet, but mbasic.facebook.com would solve the issue in both articles. I don't even have a facebook account and I'm constantly referring people to the slimmer version. I guess they must not advertise it.

em3rgent0rdr 10y ago
there's also quite a few open-source apps on F-DROID which are merely wrappers around the mobile site. I've been using "FaceSlim" for a while.
mr_spothawk 10y ago
Thank you so much :) It's like old Facebook... and quite the reminder of how quickly our world changes.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
kevincox 10y ago
That looks nice. I wonder if there is a way to set it as the preferred mobile site (for incoming links). That being said the mobile site is quite good anyways, so it's not a big issue for me.
narrator 10y ago
You can also enable "show desktop site" on Chrome android to get messenger to work again.
mnadkvlb 10y ago
Thanks. This is what i needed. FB on mobile browsers is usable again. They have intentionally crippled the mobile site if you want to chat, to have you install messenger, which is probably the worst app(/malware) i have seen.
weinzierl 10y ago
This approach doesn't work anymore (at least for me). I always get redirected to a page that prompts me to install Messenger.

hornetblack 10y ago

Just using facebook or just using messenger without the other is a pain. Also first time I used FB Messenger on a new phone (an iPhone after using android). Went through several screens of "Add your phone number", "Constantly upload all your contacts!" and "Invite your friends to messenger". all with well hidden ui for skipping each step (particularly the last one). If I wanted to contact people on messenger they would already have messenger.

kevincox 10y ago
Weird, on Android I have been using the messenger app without the FB app for years without any issue. As for the messenger setup the Android version definitely had all those screens but the skip button was very obvious.
olyjohn 10y ago
My favorite is on iOS. TURN ON NOTIFICATIONS. TURN ON NOTIFICATIONS. It asks you on every launch, and even puts a notification inside the app that stays there until you turn on notifications. So it always looks like you have a message from somebody. It never goes away.

cdelsolar 10y ago

Or maybe this excessively paranoid person could just install Messenger and realize that no one cares enough about him to turn on the two cameras and four microphones and GPS or whatever to spy on him all day.

BucketSort 10y ago

When I got aqainted with the APP, I knew right where they are going with it: facebook wants messenger to be their mobile application distribution system. Just look at how heavy the app is. It is way over engineered to simply be a messenger application. Facebook used to rake in money from facebook games. Who plays games on FB anymore? Web games were the largest games market in the world in the early FB era. I developed for some companies that had games and apps on FB. I was in the online freelance community at the time and a ton of money was poured into that. Now everything has gone mobile and they lost one of their gold mines.

developer2 10y ago

a) Users in developing countries want, even need, messaging apps without the bandwidth costs of a full social networking app. This isn't a Facebook "stunt", but rather the reality of trying to acquire users in countries without 3g/4g/wifi bandwidth at affordable costs for consumers. "Facebook Social Network" cannot compete with "WhatsApp" or similar in poor countries, but "Facebook Messenger" can. It's really not a hard concept to understand, unless one is so unaware of how lucky one is to live in a first world country with a steady income. b) It's funny how the HN crowd spins the separation of the messaging component from the rest of the product as a bad thing. When it comes to Unix, we repeatedly hear about how having separate smaller utilities to accomplish different tasks is the only right way to do things. But a company who splits their essential messaging component from the extremely heavy, unnecessary, optional, nice-to-have addons like a "wall" is somehow evil. A "messaging app" is a very tiny fraction of the functionality found in a "social networking app". It's extremely sensible to separate them. How anyone can even pretend to attribute this to some nefarious motive is beyond me. And hell, I'm an anti-Facebook nut.

fit2rule 10y ago
If Facebook Messenger only functioned as a way of sending and receiving Facebook messages to ones friends, your position would be justified. But in fact Messenger is a trojan horse app which spies on users and gathers much information about the systems its installed on, without user oversight, in order for Facebook to better profile its users. Fact: Messenger isn't a messaging app. It masquerades as one, because in reality its a user-profiling app, designed to serve one master, and one master only: Facebook. Not its users.
- developer2 10y ago
  This has nothing to do with the separation of the Messenger app from the core Facebook app. When messaging was packaged as part of the core Facebook app, the functionality was the same. There is nothing Facebook can do with two separate apps that they couldn't have done with a single app. You can't tell me that "Facebook Messenger spies", but that "combined Facebook and Facebook Messenger apps wouldn't spy". And to be clear, "spying" simply means granting the app those privileges. You could complain about Apple's or Android's approaches to approving individual privileges, but it's not like Facebook is doing anything super illegitimate that users haven't had to permit - even if the reason for granting those privileges isn't fully disclosed.

algesten 10y ago

Before Apple put the address book contacts behind permissions, facebook downloaded the entire thing, without asking, to their servers. I know this, because I make a very clear distinction between work and non-work data, facebook is non-work, so I will never have colleagues or work related contacts on facebook. Suddenly one day, out of the blue, I get a facebook "friend suggestion" for a boss I had many years back. There's absolutely _no way_ there are any contact paths from my facebook friends to this person. The only thing I had done was (reluctantly) installing the facebook mobile app. I researched it and found other people had experienced the same thing. The app simply took your entire address book and started matching up "friends" using that. WhatsApp seems to do the same today. Facebook is an evil company that absolutely will take any data they can get their hands on.

andreigheorghe 10y ago
Have you considered that it might have happened the other way around? Your boss had you in their contacts list, allowed Facebook to import it, and the number / email he had matched your account, so Facebook then knew there's a likely connection between the two of you, suggesting the friendship to both of you?
- tedunangst 10y ago
  No, no one ever considers a Facebook, LinkedIn, et al, suggestion started because the other party uploaded their contacts. It's only and always because their app spied on you, they hacked into your email, etc.
  - tracker1 10y ago
    Most of my suggestions seem to be people I either went to HS with (mutual contacts), or via FB groups... though there's the obvious bot requests, and an occasional wtf is that?

nameisu 10y ago

i got 5% battery back after uninstalling FB and messenger