More than 50% of my time is spent chatting in a specific small group of friends. We used Whatsapp before (when they didn’t have web access). Before switching to Facebook I tried convincing them to try Slack but alas that option lost out. Too bad, because I think Slack is a really good platform.
While I agree in general and prefer iOS, in this particular case that's a bit of an odd statement. On iOS you couldn't fix this behavior at all - the "stupid hack" won't exist.
Just an FYI for any Facebook product geniuses who might be reading this thread:
If you're serious about this, you're going to also want to remove any non-FB contact information for users (email, phone number) that might be displayed, because I guarantee you that rather than installing Messenger that's what I'm going to use if you let me.
And really, if you're going to be so blatantly user hostile, it makes sense to really be thorough about it.
> At the moment, you can just dismiss the notice and go about your business.
Hah, if only it were that easy. When viewing messages in Chrome for Android, I get redirected to Messenger on the Play Store when I close the overlay. Then the Play Store opens again when I tap on a conversation.
Facebook's forced migration of their users from basic, functional chat is, in my opinion, more frustrating than any single decision they've made to date (perhaps second to platform risk materializing to those businesses built on top of them).
I once had a (protracted) debate with one of their earliest product designers who defended the decision unconditionally. His arguments were—more or less—"it's better for the user". If instead it was simply "it's going to improve our bottom line" I'd not have given much of a second thought. It's just changes like this that they attempt to spin as positive to their users that drive me crazy.
ETA: found the convo from August 2014 and pasted below. Note this is when they first disabled within the app (and you could start the download to trick it into letting you continue).
> Me: Jared, i get that they want to encourage adoption of the standalone app -- probably for some business purpose, now that they're publicly traded -- but why cripple existing functionality just to obtain that goal? make it annoying so that you have to dismiss the "upgrade" comment .. fine. the only reason i can see is profit, which is fine/just own it, but people are masquerading this as a good product decision for users which i disagree with (obviously).
> Jared: A force is rarely a good product decision. That engenders distrust, and certainly they did not predict the frustration that would occur.
I whole heartedly believe the standalone application is better.
I believe Facebook took a calculated risk, but not a disingenuous one, and not one targeted at making money, one of the form of 'you won't know how to fly unless I push you out of the nest and then, woah, how much you'll thank me' and their convictions, which were backed by engagement data, were unable to actually test the event of "forcing the change". The reaons I belive they took the risk were to minimize ongoing development of a duplicative codebase and achieve engineering focus.
Now, with similar information to Facebook, I ask myself what would I do - would I recall the change with a more transitional approach (e.g. 60 days until install)? Or your friend sent you a sticker / selfie / audio file, to view use the new messenger app? It's a tough question and I pose it back to you, what would you do?
They only put that spin on it because it works. If they didn't do it, they'd seriously hurt for it in the press and in the court of public opinion. Every company does it. Until people savvy up, they're getting exactly what they deserve.
"better for the user" does not mean "better for EVERY user". A product team has to prioritize. I hate the permissions demanded by messenger, but for me it is nicer to use than the mobile site.
I'm curious what people prefer about the web chat version?
I don't use the apps of some things because the web versions ended up being faster (plus less space on the phone). In my case Messenger ended up being one of the few apps that I opted for ( chat bebles on Android are amazing UI) but...
The web version has no obnoxious notifications (yeah I know you can block them), but the big reason for me is that it's unable to access your contact list, text messages, photo gallery, camera, microphone and GPS. I don't want to share that information with Facebook/5 Eyes.
I stopped using the FB App back in 2014 when the upgrade required a whole heap of additional permissions - the ones you mention. It then forced the update along with separating out the Messenger app.
The mobile web version gave me everything that I needed when using FB - checking some occasional updates, messages and people posting baby pics. Nothing that requires a separate app, and nothing that requires an app, esp since you need to be connected to the internet to see anything. I really don't see (from my perspective) the point of any FB app.
The mobile view was awesome for me. This move blows. Since the messaging is still available on the desktop browser version, this literally means zero extra development time.
I have nothing against the Messenger app per se, but my phone's storage space and RAM is limited. I can't have all the apps installed I would like, and often find myself having to uninstall the apps that I use less frequently, even if I do use them sometimes (part of the problem could be solved by rooting the phone, but I'm lazy). So Facebook forcing me to install a new app (in my case back in 2014, as I don't really like the mobile web version) felt like a big FU from them, especially taking into account that their primary app is already a memory and battery hog (the most resource-consuming app in my phone).
If FB's claim that the standalone app is "it's better for the user" is true, then there should be no need to disable the previous functionality, since users would naturally have flocked to it as FB has been gently nudging them.
So maybe the standalone app is actually NOT better for the user. :)
So rather than fixing the problems that result in users messaging via the mobile web app instead of the messenger app, they're just going to "solve" the problem by forcing users to use the messenger app? This is why Facebook as a company doesn't have high levels of consumer trust. This will bite them in the future. Once you lose that level of trust it is extremely difficult to gain back.
I have no qualms using WhatsApp. It is a very efficient and useful app. They should probably merge messenger and WhatsApp (or maybe not lest they end up making WhatsApp bad too)
from what I understand, WhatsApp works in China and Messenger doesn't. So I doubt they'll merge. But it'd be nice if you could message from one to another
I hope the bigwigs at FB don't read your comment. Messenger and whatsapp should never be merged. Part of the reason why I'm glad that Messenger is doing so well (I don't use it myself) it's because I believe that gives them less incentive to mess with whatsapp too much. It's very likely that they will fuck it up eventually but the longer it stays usable the better.
Apologies, my computer mouse malfunctioned and I downvoted you while swapping between windows, and I felt so bad about doing so I feel compelled to comment :(
I have always found it surprising that someone may honestly think that upvoting and downvoting can be used to express agreement or disagreement. If you strongly agree or disagree, just reply with a post of your own; up/downvoting is there so you could express your opinion on the quality of the post rather than whether you think that what it is saying is true or false.
Paul Graham, who started HN, is one of those people: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171 . Generally, HN strongly discourages "me too" or "i agree" type comments. We prefer to just upvote comments in order to keep discussion threads interesting and on-topic.
It's pretty much upvote to agree, downvote if it doesn't contribute.
Of course the next highest child is then always the next most agreed upon counter argument since they should reply instead of downvote, which can make HN feel a bit contrary but full of good discourse
Facebook blocks Messenger.com for mobile browser user agents; you need to spoof your UA if you want to use it on mobile. (Some of the Facebook app wrappers can do this for you.)
More likely it's about getting more immediate attention from push notifications.
If you only ever use chat in the browser, you only see messages when you actively check it. With the app installed, you get a giant bubble that you can't ignore for every message. FB wants to be the messenger that people respond to immediately.
For me, I actually like the messenger bubble UI, and love that it's not built as a gateway to the massive time sink of the rest of Facebook. But I think it's clear that omnipresence is the goal here, and we have no reason to believe that it won't become a funnel to the rest of Facebook in the future.
Text messaging is enormous and it is going to get a lot bigger as companies monetize it with service and retail chatbots. The competition is fierce and although Facebook has the best position, it is not written anywhere that it will remain in that position forever. It's crucial to get the experience right, and you do yourself no favors by distributing your user base and developer resources across multiple platforms.
Sadly, yes. I'd (somewhat) happily run the Messenger app if its permissions were saner. What does it really need? Internet, for sure. Storage, ok. Camera and Location are fairly reasonable. Microphone only because it goes along with Camera.
But it also has Identity, Contacts, SMS, Phone, and a host of others. Do not want.
I'm not a FB fanboy or anything, but sometimes it is a good choice to free yourself from legacy tech burden and build for the future. The web (html documents fetched via http requests) were not built with mobile devices in mind, especially websockets. In the mobile era, all messaging is based on push notifications which must go through the device vendor (APNS or GCM), and trying to support the legacy tech in this landscape is just not worth it.
Chrome has perfectly acceptable push notification support.
I am an occasional user of Facebook Messenger, and using the mobile website was perfect: I don't care if notifications are delayed or even lost (I'll see the messages eventually anyway). But there's no way I'm going to install a separate app for something I use maybe once a week, tops.
If it stops working from the mobile website, then I just wait until I'm back at my computer to read fb messenges.
I'll assume, by Chrome you mean desktop Chrome. This is irrelevant to my comment. I was specifically talking about realtime push notifications via mobile devices. Also remember that your preference is just your preference, many people would want to be able to make sure their messages get seen in realtime. And Facebook probably wants that for their users too. Again, I'm not saying this is a good thing. I'm just saying it's not an illogical decision. You are free to complain but it would be stupid for Facebook to keep going this way just so they can support the legacy technology.
Chrome on Android does support real-time push notifications. I know because I was notified of a friend's Facebook post I was mentioned in within 5 seconds of my friend posting it. I don't have Facebook installed on my phone, and he posted it from his phone while my phone was face up on the table between us and we both where surprised at how fast I was notified.
Please read my other comments on this thread. Basically just because Android supports it doesn't mean it's all good since iOS doesn't. Also the "open web" you think you have on Chrome is not really that open as you think if you think about the entire mobile ecosystem landscape.
I keep saying this in every comment I made on this thread, but I'm talking about the entire mobile ecosystem. Who cares if Android Chrome supports it, iOS doesn't. Which means it's not a 100% coverage. Just by letting this happen you are providing a low quality service to not just the iOS users but also the Android users, since there will be an assumption that the recipient doesn't always get the message in realtime. If you want to send that kind of messages, there is always email. Messaging apps are built on assumptions that people know the other person receives push immediately.
1) you can never assume a recipient ever has their phone on, with them and in a non-silent mode
2) users can disable push notifications for individual apps anyway
For some reason I feel like I have become some sort of FB defender, but I am not. Just to be clear, I am not a fan of FB. I even completely got rid of my FB account a year ago because I got sick of fake interactions on the site and have never looked back. I am happy with communicating with close people just via text and other special purpose communication apps.
That said, the reasons you mention are pretty edge cases. Instead of just hating on it, just stop and think about it for a moment without prejudice. When you email someone you don't expect them to read it immediately, but when you send a text you at least expect them to know they received something, no? (If you say no to this, I really have nothing else to say anymore, you would be just denying the reality) That's what Facebook wants to be. They're competing with SMS, not email.
> I don't care if notifications are delayed or even lost
But I hope you can imagine why a chat team does care if a technology doesn't allow them to send timely and reliable notifications.
It is often better to have no feature than a bad feature. I've never used the mobile web messenger, but if it is unreliable, only works in a few browsers, it makes sense to remove the product.
The mobile Facebook website worked fine with messages. You could see whether there were new messages and you could read them and reply to them. You could even chat a bit albeit not as conveniently as on a laptop or a messaging app such as Hangouts or Whatsapp. But it was just enough to keep you connected when needed.
> But I hope you can imagine why a chat team does care if a technology doesn't allow them to send timely and reliable notifications.
Sure, that's why they have the app. But it's not a reason to completely turn off messaging from the website. Heck, they could even turn off chrome notifications completely and the website would still be completely functional.
As far as I know it's not supported on iOS. Even if Chrome had push notification on iOS I can't think of any logical reason to build a push notification inside Chrome if I were Facebook. You think Chrome is open web, but it's not. It's an app built by Google. If Facebook were to depend on Chrome push notification (which by the way doesn't even exist but for the sake of discussion let's say it does hypothetically), it would mean it's depending on Google on both Android and iOS which means when it comes to mobile Facebook MUST go through Google 100% of the time. You may say they can use Firefox, but for the same reason, why would they add one more layer of gatekeeper just to let their users communicate? You need to realize this "open web" concept is not really open anymore when it comes to mobile.
I'm not sure that's true; Facebook are keen users of serviceworkers and the Facebook web app provides push notifications on Chrome in Android using just that mechanism.
Why do people keep saying "Chrome supports push on Android" to criticize my comment which says "iOS chrome doesn't support push"? It feels like talking to a wall almost.
It's a paragraph long post. One sentence accurately says iOS Chrome (which is really Safari outside of Google's control with Chrome UI due to iOS restrictions) doesn't currently support push. The rest talks about it wouldn't make sense for Facebook to implement this (they already did), a rant about this being Google specific technology (it is not), and not being an open standard (it is).
This is what I said. And this applies to rest of the paragraph. Also open standard has absolutely nothing to do with this, and that was exactly my point. You guys think just because it's open standard it's all open and good, but my point was it is not. The reality is Google and Apple are effectively duopoly when it comes to anything push notification related (GCM is the gatekeeper for Android, APNS is the gatekeeper for iOS). So it doesn't matter if a technology is open standard, it wouldn't even matter if it was completely open source. The reality is your push MUST go through either Apple or Google.
> Even if Chrome had push notification on iOS I can't think of any logical reason to build a push notification inside Chrome if I were Facebook
Facebook has already implemented this. It is in use today on mobile web. If Safari on iOS (which powers "Chrome" on iOS) is updated to support the Push API tomorrow it will start working. Facebook has already implemented it.
As for the rest we're not even talking about web at all. Back to your original post:
> The web (html documents fetched via http requests) were not built with mobile devices in mind, especially websockets. In the mobile era, all messaging is based on push notifications which must go through the device vendor (APNS or GCM), and trying to support the legacy tech in this landscape is just not worth it.
"Legacy tech" isn't necessary to support push notifications on web. Yes, Safari on iOS is woefully outdated for now (which again is what powers "Chrome" on iOS). But it is currently supported on Android (across multiple browsers), soon Windows, and it's possible Safari on iOS will add support in the future https://onesignal.com/blog/when-will-web-push-be-supported-i... Facebook is already using this today.
I am amazed how many people on this thread are attacking me saying "Android Chrome supports push notification" when I said "Chrome doesn't support push on iOS". Are you even listening to what I say?
Every browser on iOS is just Safari with different UI (by order of Apple). No one else even could implement push notifications into their browser because only Apple has that control.
It's not that we don't hear you, it's that the reason you're in your position is because you're using a locked down platform that's trailing all other vendors in web technologies intentionally.
Yeah, first they threw out xmpp, so I couldn't use my preffered messaging app, then they kill messaging in the web view, forcing me to give up messaging or move to their messaging app, with intrusive permissions. This after they've soundly established that they don't respect users, with how they mangled addressbooks with an earlier version of the fb app.
At least, since they're closing access from alternative sources, they're slowly succeeding in driving me off facebook. At least if I now have to move to an app, I'll pick one that supports end-to-end encryption (which facebook+xmpp+otr did fine, btw, until they killed it).
I wonder how quickly things will turn in the coming decades, as the incumbent network silos continue to screw users on the altar of data mining and ad revenue, and anyone can start a competing product for free (up to ~thousands of users at least, and at that point, maybe you can find a monetization strategy or get investment to keep going until your product becomes another "big thing").
As far as I can gather, XMPP is pretty much a dead end at this point, Google Wave is open, but also dead as a spec. So what'll presumably happen, is that eventually someone will find a new, sane, extensible and open protocol, and it will take over. We now know some things that other protocols were missing: easy serialization, sane hypermedia, sane extensions, sane push, sane presence, sane async and sync modes (mail and im w/server side archiving) end to end encryption, and some form of trust or other way to mitigate spam. I'm guessing it'll be json based with perhaps swappable transport. Probably should be encapsulated in message-level authenticated encryption. And it'll probably be another five years before we see it realized.
Apologies, I remember it as Google Wave - but you are right it has evolved, and Apache Wave captures the idea that it is indeed an open platform. And while I agree that the technology isn't dead, I don't think it (the protocol) is likely to be what ~7 billion people (or how many now has a phone number) will use to communicate across network providers, carriers, device manufactures and content silos. I think it is dead as an alternative in that sense.
I still use XMPP to connect to google talk and converse with people who are using hangouts. I use "Conversations" on Android, which works well and also supports OMEMO (the XMPP version of the encryption behind Signal/Whatsapp/etc). I'm effectively doing the equivalent of your facebook+xmpp+otr setup today, but it's googlechat+xmpp+omemo.
I thought Google had killed off all XMPP access too. Thanks for the heads up. Of course, everyone I communicate with who doesn't just use email and/or sms/phone are on Facebook (and Snapchat) - but few if any use hangouts. But it's nice to know that if I go back to using XMPP, I can at least point people towards hangouts. Until Allo takes over anyway...
[ed: submitted that to hn, as I'm sure many people would be interested in an update on XMPP from someone that actually works with XMPP implementations:
The Facebook app on Android actually works fine without any special permissions. If you disable them all via the new methods in Marshmallow, it just continues trucking on. Of course they'll never stop asking for the extra permissions, but its functionality is pretty equivalent to the mobile site even with no intrusive permissions.
Good to know. I've yet gotten around to trying this out (just recently upgraded to a Marshmellow phone), I feared it was install > grant permssions > optionally revoke permissions. And I wasn't ready to try that with an app that came out of fb, given their track record.
Maybe that's an idea for an open source Android demo app - one that requests a certain set of (or all possible) permissions, and then simply displays the status of those permissions (granted/blocked).
The Facebook app is a memory hog though, and was causing UI lag in other apps on my phone. I have very little idea how it was doing that, but when I removed it, the lag stopped.
I uninstalled the Facebook Messenger app about 3 months ago when I saw a news article about how it devoured battery on Android, because I was having battery life problems at the time.
I just removed Messenger in favor of the Facebook Lite app, which can be found on APK mirror sites if Google Play doesn't offer it. There does seem to be a significant improvement in idle battery drain.
> how they mangled addressbooks with an earlier version of the fb app
Oh right, I didn't know they have my whole Android address book before. I recommend you to download the data Facebook has about you (they don't give all, but a fair amount) https://www.facebook.com/help/302796099745838
I was actually surprised at the sheer amount of my personal life contained in that file.
> As far as I can gather, XMPP is pretty much a dead end at this point, Google Wave is open, but also dead as a spec. So what'll presumably happen, is that eventually someone will find a new, sane, extensible and open protocol, and it will take over.
I really, really would like to see this happen, but if the past decade and a half is any indication, the ones taking over will be newer centralized, ad monetized systems. Most of the non-tech people don't care much about privacy or lock-in. I keep trying very often to explain to people why privacy is important and why platforms like FB/WhatsApp, etc., are not good. It's an uphill battle though, and most people don't get it or feel it's too much of a hassle to change their habits and that of the people in their networks.
I work for a living and carry a work phone that is managed due to compliance requirements. I could pop on Facebook and check the occasional message. Facebook makes the mobile web experience as user hostile as possible, but it's sort of works. Now I'm stuck, as are about 20,000 of my coworkers.
It's really interesting to me how controversial contrarian opinions to Facebook actions are in this forum. The parent has bounced up and down vote wise quite a bit.
" In the mobile era, all messaging is based on push notifications "
Says you. I'm perfectly happy not knowing about my FB messages until I go look for them. I DON'T WANT them pushed to me. If they want to send me something that needs to be read quickly, use email. Or gasp phone/text/whatsapp (I use the latter begrudgingly because whatsapp has pretty much replaced texting in lots of Europe).
And we were doing it because Facebook was pushing their messenger app, when the normal Facebook app handled it just fine.
They just simply decided one day, oh hey let's redirect the messages page on the Facebook app to a static page saying "download messenger" and not give any access to the messages, including view-access. Even when you get a notification on your phone about a new message.
I actually liked that I could use a messenger app without all the rest of the stuff that I never used. But I think they split it back then because they wanted to have something more similar to whatsapp (which wasn't theirs yet) - They apparently let you use a phone number to log to messenger too.
You can actually view messages on the mobile web app (or you could earlier today, anyway). On my phone, clicking on messages tells me to download messenger. If I ignore that and hit all messages, it nags again, but eventually does it.
FWIW, I discovered this because Messenger would not show me a group chat that I was added to by co-workers (who I'm not friends with on FB).
Edit: just realized you were referring to the app, not the site. My mistake.
What data can yhet get from having messenger as an app rather than a website? They already have my list of contacts, all the messages I've sent, they can store my message as I type it through their website. I just don't understand!
I've never had a Facebook app on any of my phones and I will never install one.
Worth pointing out: Luckily, my phone came without Facebook apps preinstalled, so I had the choice of seeing what Facebook wants to access. Other people don't even have that chance since it comes preinstalled in most of the cases.
That's exactly why many don't run the official Facebook either. There are third party apps using the web-interface meant to sandbox Facebook so they can't gather all information. Up until now those web-interfaces have also been able to use the chat though. And you can still do that with some quick apps made to work around this block by facebook.
Is there any source to confirm "Facebook as a company doesn't have high levels of consumer trust"? I even find hard to understand what consumer trust means in a precise way.
no.they need their users on messenger because they have big plans for that app. there are already businesses connecting with customers through messenger.
Now it's going to be much harder to send messages from your friend's phone when your phone dies. Before you could use an incognito tab, and now you have to log out of the Messenger app entirely and log in as another user.
Thank you for bringing up this point - I've often thought about it before, but I didn't immediately think of the connection here. Just another reason why these kinds of changes are a bad idea. It might not be that often that you're without your device (battery died, stolen, forgotten), but when that happens not having a great fallback is really annoying. This goes for all kinds of apps and services, not just fb messaging.
It doesn't seem like you can even log out anymore inside the iOS Messenger app. My wife was without her phone a few weeks ago and needed to message someone via FB.
I could not find the log out button in iOS Messenger, and the only way to do that seems to be logging in to fb.com and hitting a button there which will deactivate your phone session.
As a heavy messenger user, my typical use-cases can entirely be fulfilled with a web-based messenger. However, FB doesn't let people open messenger.com from a mobile browser. And if you request the desktop site, it's virtually unusable on the tiny phone screen. It must have been really hard to make a responsive messenger UI.
This announcement coming on the same day as the post about Facebook not using the microphone in the app seems strange to me.
I don't want any Facebook apps on my phone due to privacy and tracking reasons, and so I used the web view (with an app wrapper like Tinfoil with location disabled), now I won't be able to send messages any longer.
It's a loosing game to use "open" web solutions to provide a third party application to these silos. Twitter already killed themselves this way (they're just too big to die quickly), and I think facebook will too.
Facebook as "facebook" is useful and fun, and a way to connect with people and share stuff. Facebook as "messenger" is phone service. It's infrastructure that's part of your life. It's part of direct human contact. It's way too risky to trust to an entity like Facebook (or Google).
If these companies had "invented" email, we'd been set back decades. Just look at how badly MS manages to preform as a netcitizen with Exchange and Outlook (for no good technical reason). Without the network effect and competition that the open email standards push, we'd all be faxing print-outs between hobbled messaging silos.
I mean, we're still using SMS. SMS! Because the big boys couldn't agree to just have user@facebook talk to user@outlook and user@google or user@apple in a sane way! Both FB and Google even had XMPP going for a while, but didn't even federate with each other. It's as if Gmail suddenly stopped accepting external mail (not that their magic black holing isn't annoying enough to work around as it is).
I agree completely with you on this matter and this change will probably bring me back to using SMS and email more.
I really hope RCS will catch on in the future, but there are extra obstacles in addition of all these competing corporate silos of this happening - carriers. Depressing.
I mean, to be fair, the only thing I use Facebook for is Messenger, and the Messenger app is actually halfway decent. It caches user names and pictures a little too aggressively, and the new trend of "let's add a row of buttons to the text input box, doubling its size to reduce screen space for features that should be optional" is incredibly obnoxious, but overall it's a decent app. It's obviously not designed for the users, but it's better than the Hangouts app.
This isn't to say that removing the web functionality isn't a dick move and fairly user-hostile, but I don't really understand why so many people act like Messenger.app is an affront to god and man.
Eventually facebook will become so user hostile the network effect will mean that so many people are leaving it'll be like Digg and Myspace all over again. Can we go back to the time when companies tried to please users instead of advertisers?
I bet this was the decision made by the board members for the "share holder value" in attempts to increase earning per share via advertisement. Once the messenger gains enough users, it's obvious that there will be ads on FB messenger
I think we are slowly going back to the time when social networks didn't exist.
The "social network" generation is maturing enough to know better than using social networks, and the new generation considers them lame and apparently prefer more discreet methods of communication and socializing.
FB(the platform), Twitter and the rest, are slowly finding their place as news aggregators and celebrity/corp point of presence.
As for FB, the company, I just hope they keep giving us amazing tools like RocksDB and React.
You mean like AOL? I haven't seen your vitriol since the last big FB redesign that even my aunt complained about, which was like what, 5 years ago? I even posted something to FB in the last few years, once it was apparent that FB had not done further obvious redesigns, "remember back when we all hated FB and were going to never use it again?" Nobody replied or liked it.
FB is the Great Mall of the Internet, people don't really care if it sucks because it's just a place where people are. Many don't even have a concept of websites sucking.
I'm not a heavy Facebook user, so I may very well be wrong, but I think Facebook is slowly start to be less valuable in some respects.
For instance businesses need to start evaluating if they really require a Facebook presence. The users that can reach you on Facebook are obnoxious, and expects 24/7 feedback. Unless you are a small niche business you're simply not able to build sufficient community around your Facebook page for it to help further your business. For medium and large companies Facebook is just a place for customers to complain and win prices.
As the company I work for has expanded and become less and less niche we seeing decreasing user engagement from our customers on Facebook, unless they can win a price. At this point marketing really should evaluate the continued need for maintaining a Facebook page, it's just becoming a third support channel, but one where peoples expectations are simply to high, in terms of response time.
Honestly, why is companies like Coca Cola or Volvo on Facebook, it make zero sense when you think about it.
The big companies have got a Facebook/Twitter etc presence because their competitors have one. It's almost certainly a pain in the ass for them because as you mention customers will use it as a public platform to beat the company with when they're pissed off.
There was a period about 5 years ago when every company in the world thought they needed to have Facebook, Google+, Twitter, LinkedIn and so on. It was a serious case of FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) as opposed to a genuine business case for social media.
I suspect we're going to see small and medium companies take a view that maintaining a presence on social media is still not generating ROI. As a result they'll consolidate to fewer social media platforms and perhaps at some point none at all.
If SMEs (or SMBs as they're known in the US) take this approach, big companies will slowly follow I'm sure.
They also have some accounts for specific things, but no general Apple one. The support channel is about the closest to an official overall Apple account. The support channel seems to be pretty decent so far.
Facebook is mostly politics and baby pictures for me, neither of which I care about, with the occasional important relationship announcement that I do care about, which is why I come back daily.
I dislike this change. I specifically only access Facebook on my phone via the web app because (1) it saves significant battery and (2) I absolutely do not want the popup bubbles during the work day from church and other social groups I am connected to on Facebook. Ultimately, all this means is that I will stop accessing Facebook Messenger on my phone all together. I will communicate with the people who matter most over the Signal app or plain old SMS or email.
it's usable for me if you switch to desktop, but still go to m.facebook.com rather than www.facebook.com (easiest way is to go to facebook first and then switch to desktop). i'm guessing that whatever ajax call clicking on the message icon triggers gets a "this is a desktop" token attached to it even if you are visiting the site via m.facebook.com
This is a good work around. However I will not be relying on this. I'll just reduce my use of Messenger (and probably Facebook) all together.
I'm currently not that dependent on Messenger since most people just text or call me anyway. The rest of Facebook I usually avoid anyway as it's in a different wavelength than I am.
I wonder where that leaves the say 10% of users that use a browser because they are on an device that isn't supported by Messenger (obsolete Android, iPhone, Windows Phone, Blackberry, Fire, etc).
They are redirected to mbasic.facebook.com which still works. Most Android FB wrappers have used that as a workaround for now to still reach Messenger.
That's a very weak reason not to use the messenger. You're confirming that if you want to create a good app, you should not listen to complaining users.
Judging by your comments you're not going to use the app period. You can just say so instead of creating artificial reasons which don't hold true for you anyways.
Sane defaults are a very good reason to decide to use an app. It's very common to reset user settings back to defaults during a "major" (or just marketing) upgrade of an app.
We may have very different samples but I'd be shocked to see that behavior in any app that I'd consider worth using. That would easily knock a couple stars off of my (mental or otherwise) rating of an app.
I use the facebook app quite a bit, and its never used more than a few precent of my battery in the battery stats on Android, and usually significantly less than my mail client(K-9 Mail) so I never understood the meme that the facebook app uses a ton of battery. Just having the screen on is going to use more battery than the facebook app.
"It turned out other Android services including Android system and Android OS showed reduced battery consumption when the Facebook app was uninstalled. Those services act as a buffer for many apps to the outside world when running in the background. So while Facebook didn’t look like it was using that much power, it was actually just being displayed elsewhere in Android’s statistics." From: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/feb/01/uninstall...
YMMV, but on my phone (HTC One M8), Facebook is almost always the top battery user as shown in the Android battery usage report.
And on my old phone (a venerable HTC Desire HD), Facebook's decision to make me install Messenger in addition to the regular app some time ago was the turning point from low latency and good user experience to overall lag in the phone.
I was bitten by a similar problem one of the very first versions of the FB app, and I haven't tried it again. It synced my Google Contacts (what I use as my canonical contacts list) with Facebook, resulting in duplicates and a whole bunch of mess that still isn't completely resolved years later. Now that I'm on Marshmallow, I might risk it, but I'm very hesitant to do so.
Not to mention that Facebook's apps are notorious for their battery usage (probably because of their egregious privacy-violating "features", but whatever).
Privacy concerned users can use wrappers around the Facebook website, such as the open source "Tinfoil for Facebook" or "Face Slim" android apps, then Facebook cannot access certain things (depending on your configuration). If have to use a proprietary facebook app, then likely cannot achieve the same degree of privacy protections.
I'm sorry. I still don't understand what specific information Facebook can gather from them using their app that they can't from the browser. When I look in my phone settings for the Messenger app, I can switch off it's ability to look at locations, photos, etc.
Tinfoil appears to be an app to specifically work around the fact that browsers can leak more information than the app would.
well the facebook app is always on, even in background. It is probably reading every keystroke and touch action, and even every pause between actions. But when accessing the basic browser site inside tinfoil, they can only get http actions you actually transmit, such as likes, login times, page loads, etc.
Of course not other apps. I'm talking about the facebook app itself. When you start typing text, it is presumably reading the delay between every keystroke and all your deletes. However, on the non-js html site, it only can get the text after you submit.
I don't put any Facebook software on my phone, including Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook, and Facebook Messenger. The reason they are forcing people to use Facebook Messenger is to force people who only use the website to install software that tracks you.
There are no good chat platforms that have anywhere near the network effect of Facebook. There are a couple of silos that are ok, like Hangouts and presumably iMessage. People don't generally use XMPP. Sending a text message can be a bit intrusive, a facebook message is more like an email in that I don't expect to wake someone in a different timezone if I send one - but it's unlike an email in that I can be fairly certain (a certain subset) of people will get it. And might check it/reply when it's convenient for them to talk. An asynchronous signalling of a conversation, if you will.
So when choosing between a lot of bad and propietary options for chat, fb messaging was best.
Except you can't and shouldn't trust FB to make client software; they take to many permissions, they might mess with your (contact) data - the apps have an inflated sense of urgency (hangouts is guilty of this too). And they are resource hungry.
And as fb chat is generally (for me) somewhat asynchronous, the web client was perfect: I could see if there were any new messages, and if there were any new notifications at the same time.
Moving this to one platform, for me, kills the product. At least on mobile. And if I can't use it on mobile, I'll probably slowly stop using it altogether.
For me it's mainly bad, because I see no clear alternative. Facebook was the one silo I could reliably reach most acquaintances. I'm not on snapchat, but even if I was, there are people I might occasionally reach out to on fb, that I probably won't contact/be contacted by on snapchat. Google social efforts is a joke, and many people don't really use email for personal communication.
The first part of your argument makes perfect sense.
The rest less so. Looking at my iOS phone's options, I believe I can disable access to pretty much any data the browser doesn't have, including notifications. What am I missing?
[ed: About notifications - I think the point there is more a cultural point. I don't want to send you a fb message at 3 am your time if I think it might wake you up.]
I know every time a post about Facebook makes it to the front page here people say they don't use Facebook anymore but as a heavy Facebook user I am so fucking glad I blocked all Facebook domains last week. I feel liberated! This move would have quite ecked me but nope! Fuck you Facebook.
The reason I use the web interface and not the app are following:
- you can't disable notifications
- you can't secure your app (aka Pin protection or a password)
- huge battery drain as it is constantly connected to the internet.
The web app is easy. You log in and you check your messages. An alternative for android that I have found for Android is called fast Facebook. It shows a web view of the chat and ignores the market:// redirects. Which is already better.
if i understand you correctly, that's muting conversations on a one-at-a-time basis, which is not the same as being able to globally disable notifications from the app
You can disable those too, click the "Profile" icon (the one with the silhouette) at the main screen, third menu option after user name and phone number is notifications. Globally.
on android at least, you can always globally disable notifications from an app: long press on a notification, tap the little i in a circle that appears, and there should be an "allow notifications" box you can un-check.
Well...you have incremental time options, or you can set it to "Until I turn it back on". Only globally has a limit to turn off EVERYTHING for 24 hours. Otherwise, you can disable wholesale the sound and popup notification with no max time. I'm no FB support person, just a heavy user of the App.
I have the opposite question: if its main selling point is being ubiquitous, why the fuck wouldn't they want to maximize the number of ways users can access it so that it stays, you know, ubiquitous?
how often do you want to chat with someone you wouldn't give your phone number to though? if they can call you via messenger anyway, where is the win in them not having your phone number?
because it's very well designed. it gets casual asynchronous messaging right in a lot of ways. unlike email, threads are grouped by person rather than by subject line, which makes it a lot lower friction (subject lines are for talking about something; they're a usability drawback when you're primarily talking to someone). unlike sms, you don't have to maintain a person->id mapping yourself, it's done globally and kept constantly up to date by facebook. unlike whatsapp, it's not tied to your phone; you just need to know your username and password to access it from any browser-capable device. and finally, it supports notifications via a variety of mechanisms, and even if you don't enable any of them (i don't), most people who use facebook check it regularly anyway, so you get to see the little "you have new messages" icon each time you go to read your stream.
I have a FB account but rarely login to it. I've never installed the app on my iPhone because I don't want notifications and generally find FB distasteful.
If there was a higher class crowd on FB I would probably use it more but for me it ended up being a bunch of people from my hometown / high school who are angry, usually at other ethnic groups and don't seem wildly successful in their own right.
If I do want to login, I just wait until I'm at a computer. The standalone Messenger app is horrible for permissions and should be avoided at all costs. If you can muster the strength to delete FB, even better. I'm able to very easily not feel tempted to login to that cesspool so I haven't needed to delete mine.
Most of the time, if someone complains about "stupid discussions/content" or anything alike, I feel that facebook just isn't used in its full potential.
I unfollowed/unfriended/blocked all the connections to people who produce content which isn't enriching my browsing experience. As a result I follow around 10% of my facebook friends, which is a set of about 200 connections with (mostly) valuable content.
I would end up with about 10% or less like you said. I figured if I'm going to start deleting people I'll just delete FB wholesale. Just helps me get spied on anyway.
Practical enough for me. The only thing I use Facebook for is to say "Thank you" when folks wish me a happy birthday on my "wall". For literally everything else, the friends and family worth talking to have gotten the message that I'm not reliably reachable on Facebook and therefore should be reached by other means (and if they're worth talking to, they should already have my phone number and/or email address).
It's about drawing a line. I drew that line two years ago, and not once have I looked back or otherwise felt any semblance of regret or frustration from it. Among SMS, email, Telegram, Google+/Hangouts, ordinary phone calls, snail mail, in-person, and the cornucopia of other communications options out there, there's zero reason to put up with Facebook's nonsense.
> The only thing I use Facebook for is to say "Thank you" when folks wish me a happy birthday on my "wall".
You can fix that by removing your birthday from Facebook. I did that one year and it turned out as expected, people only wish you happy birthday on Facebook, because Facebook more or less tells them to.
I use Facebook (somewhat sparingly) but considered deleting my profile a few years ago, when I wasn't using it at all.
I decided against because it was so useful as an "every once in a while" inbox for people who wouldn't have been able to reach me otherwise: a girl I met at a party, a cousin from Australia who happened to be in town for a couple of days, etc etc. The former would either never find me (depending on how big the party was) and the latter would have to jump through the hoops of chaining phone numbers through our large extended family. Both of those are handily coopted by having an almost-universal directory, with customizable amounts of information displayed, along with photos so you know it's the right profile.
Or you know, you guys could have emailed each other. Everyone still has email and you know what its the one thing on the internet that always works really well.
This is typical trope of the "why I have to be on FB." Download everyones contact and or sync to your address book. When people are in town they text you or email you. Trust me it works. People found each other just fine before FB and they can just find now.
> Or you know, you guys could have emailed each other.
Um, did you actually read my comment? Roughly half ofit was dedicated to the fact that being able to find me by just my name and photo is easier than trying to track down my phone number; I'm not sure how you missed that....
Why do you think it would be any easier to find my email address? If anything, connecting us across my extended family would be a lot harder through finding a bunch of emails than finding a bunch of email addresses. I honestly don't know what reality you're imagining where everybody has the email address of everybody they know.
>For literally everything else, the friends and family worth talking to have gotten the message that I'm not reliably reachable on Facebook
Same thing here, I drew this line about 5 years ago. Now everybody knows that the only reliable means to communicate remotely with me are : Emails/Signal, or regular phone calls/SMS as a fallback.
Only people worth talking to (family and close friends), do the effort of reaching me on my preferred communication channel.
I have stopped using Facebook (Twitter and everything social) half a decade ago. I don't use messaging apps and turn on my phone only when I really need to.
Result: more free time to do interesting and productive things and people aren't bothering me as much. I have taken control of my life and I'm not being pushed around to do things based on notifications or desire for artificial status(likes, retweet, stars). Stop using these services that sell your privacy, control your communication, make hostile changes and in the end do not care about you.
I concur with you. I realized that social apps were taking too much of my time an uninstalled them from my phone. I only use my laptop to access fb and Twitter and I'm very happy with the move.
Some users post contact info in their profile, so there is the possibility for messaging (email). Yes, there are policies, and structure and many good things - I'm not sure that means that HN isn't a social network of sorts?
I suppose it might boil down to a technicality, but I always read "social network" as a graph that describes how a group is connected - not as some strict technological definition. So a bunch of people that informally meet at a cafe to discuss politics, art and other topics can be described as a social network.
I wholeheartedly agree with this. I deleted my facebook account several years ago and I still have contact with my real friends via phone and email and a thing called meeting up in real life. All I lost were the friends I never wanted anyway.
As a side note, my company recently had a meeting with execs of our national branch of facebook, and after that meeting about 50% of our execs went and deleted their account...
>As a side note, my company recently had a meeting with execs of our national branch of facebook, and after that meeting about 50% of our execs went and deleted their account...
I am interested, can you please elaborate ? (Feel free to email me - see my profile - if it is sensitive)
I'd rather not, it is sensitive, but I can tell you that the whole management at our company came out shocked at how FB operated, and not to the positive.
The issue was the "product"s (i.e regular people) privacy and the attitude towards them by the local FB management.
I only use facebook over the browser when using my phone. The facebook applications request an appalling number of permissions... never mind the general intrusiveness and battery hogging.
As far as I know, it's still tricky to install an app, then revoke all permissions before the app can possibly run? It would be different if no apps got any permissions by default, and they all had to "prompt on first use" - but that's not how it works, or is it?
When an app installs it has zero permissions. When the app needs privileged access like microphone access a system notification pops up saying "To record a voice message allow AppX microphone access". You can choose to grant the permission or ignore it.
This is a problem with Android, not Facebook. iOS asks for permissions "on-demand", not when the app is installed. And everything can be denied and you can still use the app.
516 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 396 ms ] threadTo quote Mel Brooks' brilliant "History of the World, Part I" - "It's good to be the king".
If you don't want to trust slack of facebook, rocket.chat is shaping up nicely as a self-hostable solution.
- Force people to download Facebook Messenger
- ???
- Profit?!
Did anyone really think that would be used for a good purpose, instead of just rampantly abused?
If you're serious about this, you're going to also want to remove any non-FB contact information for users (email, phone number) that might be displayed, because I guarantee you that rather than installing Messenger that's what I'm going to use if you let me.
And really, if you're going to be so blatantly user hostile, it makes sense to really be thorough about it.
Hah, if only it were that easy. When viewing messages in Chrome for Android, I get redirected to Messenger on the Play Store when I close the overlay. Then the Play Store opens again when I tap on a conversation.
Screw you, Facebook.
I once had a (protracted) debate with one of their earliest product designers who defended the decision unconditionally. His arguments were—more or less—"it's better for the user". If instead it was simply "it's going to improve our bottom line" I'd not have given much of a second thought. It's just changes like this that they attempt to spin as positive to their users that drive me crazy.
ETA: found the convo from August 2014 and pasted below. Note this is when they first disabled within the app (and you could start the download to trick it into letting you continue).
> Me: Jared, i get that they want to encourage adoption of the standalone app -- probably for some business purpose, now that they're publicly traded -- but why cripple existing functionality just to obtain that goal? make it annoying so that you have to dismiss the "upgrade" comment .. fine. the only reason i can see is profit, which is fine/just own it, but people are masquerading this as a good product decision for users which i disagree with (obviously).
> Jared: A force is rarely a good product decision. That engenders distrust, and certainly they did not predict the frustration that would occur.
I whole heartedly believe the standalone application is better.
I believe Facebook took a calculated risk, but not a disingenuous one, and not one targeted at making money, one of the form of 'you won't know how to fly unless I push you out of the nest and then, woah, how much you'll thank me' and their convictions, which were backed by engagement data, were unable to actually test the event of "forcing the change". The reaons I belive they took the risk were to minimize ongoing development of a duplicative codebase and achieve engineering focus.
Now, with similar information to Facebook, I ask myself what would I do - would I recall the change with a more transitional approach (e.g. 60 days until install)? Or your friend sent you a sticker / selfie / audio file, to view use the new messenger app? It's a tough question and I pose it back to you, what would you do?
I'm curious what people prefer about the web chat version?
The mobile web version gave me everything that I needed when using FB - checking some occasional updates, messages and people posting baby pics. Nothing that requires a separate app, and nothing that requires an app, esp since you need to be connected to the internet to see anything. I really don't see (from my perspective) the point of any FB app.
The mobile view was awesome for me. This move blows. Since the messaging is still available on the desktop browser version, this literally means zero extra development time.
FU FB.
So maybe the standalone app is actually NOT better for the user. :)
And I actually agree with you...
Of course the next highest child is then always the next most agreed upon counter argument since they should reply instead of downvote, which can make HN feel a bit contrary but full of good discourse
Btw: that works with mobile Firefox. (I originally used it instead of chrome, mostly because it supports ad blocking on unrooted devices.)
If you only ever use chat in the browser, you only see messages when you actively check it. With the app installed, you get a giant bubble that you can't ignore for every message. FB wants to be the messenger that people respond to immediately.
For me, I actually like the messenger bubble UI, and love that it's not built as a gateway to the massive time sink of the rest of Facebook. But I think it's clear that omnipresence is the goal here, and we have no reason to believe that it won't become a funnel to the rest of Facebook in the future.
https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2015/03/push-notif...
But it also has Identity, Contacts, SMS, Phone, and a host of others. Do not want.
I am an occasional user of Facebook Messenger, and using the mobile website was perfect: I don't care if notifications are delayed or even lost (I'll see the messages eventually anyway). But there's no way I'm going to install a separate app for something I use maybe once a week, tops.
If it stops working from the mobile website, then I just wait until I'm back at my computer to read fb messenges.
1) you can never assume a recipient ever has their phone on, with them and in a non-silent mode 2) users can disable push notifications for individual apps anyway
That said, the reasons you mention are pretty edge cases. Instead of just hating on it, just stop and think about it for a moment without prejudice. When you email someone you don't expect them to read it immediately, but when you send a text you at least expect them to know they received something, no? (If you say no to this, I really have nothing else to say anymore, you would be just denying the reality) That's what Facebook wants to be. They're competing with SMS, not email.
Shenanigans!
Also, if they're supporting desktop clients I again call shenanigans on your argument.
But I hope you can imagine why a chat team does care if a technology doesn't allow them to send timely and reliable notifications.
It is often better to have no feature than a bad feature. I've never used the mobile web messenger, but if it is unreliable, only works in a few browsers, it makes sense to remove the product.
Sure, that's why they have the app. But it's not a reason to completely turn off messaging from the website. Heck, they could even turn off chrome notifications completely and the website would still be completely functional.
> Even if Chrome had push notification on iOS
This is what I said. And this applies to rest of the paragraph. Also open standard has absolutely nothing to do with this, and that was exactly my point. You guys think just because it's open standard it's all open and good, but my point was it is not. The reality is Google and Apple are effectively duopoly when it comes to anything push notification related (GCM is the gatekeeper for Android, APNS is the gatekeeper for iOS). So it doesn't matter if a technology is open standard, it wouldn't even matter if it was completely open source. The reality is your push MUST go through either Apple or Google.
Facebook has already implemented this. It is in use today on mobile web. If Safari on iOS (which powers "Chrome" on iOS) is updated to support the Push API tomorrow it will start working. Facebook has already implemented it.
As for the rest we're not even talking about web at all. Back to your original post:
> The web (html documents fetched via http requests) were not built with mobile devices in mind, especially websockets. In the mobile era, all messaging is based on push notifications which must go through the device vendor (APNS or GCM), and trying to support the legacy tech in this landscape is just not worth it.
"Legacy tech" isn't necessary to support push notifications on web. Yes, Safari on iOS is woefully outdated for now (which again is what powers "Chrome" on iOS). But it is currently supported on Android (across multiple browsers), soon Windows, and it's possible Safari on iOS will add support in the future https://onesignal.com/blog/when-will-web-push-be-supported-i... Facebook is already using this today.
I am amazed how many people on this thread are attacking me saying "Android Chrome supports push notification" when I said "Chrome doesn't support push on iOS". Are you even listening to what I say?
It's not that we don't hear you, it's that the reason you're in your position is because you're using a locked down platform that's trailing all other vendors in web technologies intentionally.
At least, since they're closing access from alternative sources, they're slowly succeeding in driving me off facebook. At least if I now have to move to an app, I'll pick one that supports end-to-end encryption (which facebook+xmpp+otr did fine, btw, until they killed it).
I wonder how quickly things will turn in the coming decades, as the incumbent network silos continue to screw users on the altar of data mining and ad revenue, and anyone can start a competing product for free (up to ~thousands of users at least, and at that point, maybe you can find a monetization strategy or get investment to keep going until your product becomes another "big thing").
As far as I can gather, XMPP is pretty much a dead end at this point, Google Wave is open, but also dead as a spec. So what'll presumably happen, is that eventually someone will find a new, sane, extensible and open protocol, and it will take over. We now know some things that other protocols were missing: easy serialization, sane hypermedia, sane extensions, sane push, sane presence, sane async and sync modes (mail and im w/server side archiving) end to end encryption, and some form of trust or other way to mitigate spam. I'm guessing it'll be json based with perhaps swappable transport. Probably should be encapsulated in message-level authenticated encryption. And it'll probably be another five years before we see it realized.
It is Apache wave. And nothing is dead if a community wants it to be alive.
The author of Conversations recently wrote up the state of XMPP in 2016: https://gultsch.de/xmpp_2016.html
So, though you may not be using it anymore, XMPP is far from a dead end.
[ed: submitted that to hn, as I'm sure many people would be interested in an update on XMPP from someone that actually works with XMPP implementations:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11837466 ]
Maybe that's an idea for an open source Android demo app - one that requests a certain set of (or all possible) permissions, and then simply displays the status of those permissions (granted/blocked).
Oh right, I didn't know they have my whole Android address book before. I recommend you to download the data Facebook has about you (they don't give all, but a fair amount) https://www.facebook.com/help/302796099745838
I was actually surprised at the sheer amount of my personal life contained in that file.
I really, really would like to see this happen, but if the past decade and a half is any indication, the ones taking over will be newer centralized, ad monetized systems. Most of the non-tech people don't care much about privacy or lock-in. I keep trying very often to explain to people why privacy is important and why platforms like FB/WhatsApp, etc., are not good. It's an uphill battle though, and most people don't get it or feel it's too much of a hassle to change their habits and that of the people in their networks.
Except native apps aren't the future :/
I work for a living and carry a work phone that is managed due to compliance requirements. I could pop on Facebook and check the occasional message. Facebook makes the mobile web experience as user hostile as possible, but it's sort of works. Now I'm stuck, as are about 20,000 of my coworkers.
FB is a real lightning rod topic.
Says you. I'm perfectly happy not knowing about my FB messages until I go look for them. I DON'T WANT them pushed to me. If they want to send me something that needs to be read quickly, use email. Or gasp phone/text/whatsapp (I use the latter begrudgingly because whatsapp has pretty much replaced texting in lots of Europe).
They just simply decided one day, oh hey let's redirect the messages page on the Facebook app to a static page saying "download messenger" and not give any access to the messages, including view-access. Even when you get a notification on your phone about a new message.
FWIW, I discovered this because Messenger would not show me a group chat that I was added to by co-workers (who I'm not friends with on FB).
Edit: just realized you were referring to the app, not the site. My mistake.
I've never had a Facebook app on any of my phones and I will never install one.
Worth pointing out: Luckily, my phone came without Facebook apps preinstalled, so I had the choice of seeing what Facebook wants to access. Other people don't even have that chance since it comes preinstalled in most of the cases.
Also I'm on iOS so I can deny access to Gps/location/camera/mic and there's no way to access my message history.
Thanks for the reply though!
I could not find the log out button in iOS Messenger, and the only way to do that seems to be logging in to fb.com and hitting a button there which will deactivate your phone session.
I don't want any Facebook apps on my phone due to privacy and tracking reasons, and so I used the web view (with an app wrapper like Tinfoil with location disabled), now I won't be able to send messages any longer.
Guess I won't be using Messenger any longer.
I have my doubts about it on iOS but at least the app permissions work properly there.
Facebook as "facebook" is useful and fun, and a way to connect with people and share stuff. Facebook as "messenger" is phone service. It's infrastructure that's part of your life. It's part of direct human contact. It's way too risky to trust to an entity like Facebook (or Google).
If these companies had "invented" email, we'd been set back decades. Just look at how badly MS manages to preform as a netcitizen with Exchange and Outlook (for no good technical reason). Without the network effect and competition that the open email standards push, we'd all be faxing print-outs between hobbled messaging silos.
I mean, we're still using SMS. SMS! Because the big boys couldn't agree to just have user@facebook talk to user@outlook and user@google or user@apple in a sane way! Both FB and Google even had XMPP going for a while, but didn't even federate with each other. It's as if Gmail suddenly stopped accepting external mail (not that their magic black holing isn't annoying enough to work around as it is).
I really hope RCS will catch on in the future, but there are extra obstacles in addition of all these competing corporate silos of this happening - carriers. Depressing.
http://www.computerworld.com/article/3045125/mobile-apps/goo...
This isn't to say that removing the web functionality isn't a dick move and fairly user-hostile, but I don't really understand why so many people act like Messenger.app is an affront to god and man.
The "social network" generation is maturing enough to know better than using social networks, and the new generation considers them lame and apparently prefer more discreet methods of communication and socializing.
FB(the platform), Twitter and the rest, are slowly finding their place as news aggregators and celebrity/corp point of presence.
As for FB, the company, I just hope they keep giving us amazing tools like RocksDB and React.
FB is the Great Mall of the Internet, people don't really care if it sucks because it's just a place where people are. Many don't even have a concept of websites sucking.
Sounds like you have a bad case of "back in my day"-itis.
For instance businesses need to start evaluating if they really require a Facebook presence. The users that can reach you on Facebook are obnoxious, and expects 24/7 feedback. Unless you are a small niche business you're simply not able to build sufficient community around your Facebook page for it to help further your business. For medium and large companies Facebook is just a place for customers to complain and win prices.
As the company I work for has expanded and become less and less niche we seeing decreasing user engagement from our customers on Facebook, unless they can win a price. At this point marketing really should evaluate the continued need for maintaining a Facebook page, it's just becoming a third support channel, but one where peoples expectations are simply to high, in terms of response time.
Honestly, why is companies like Coca Cola or Volvo on Facebook, it make zero sense when you think about it.
There was a period about 5 years ago when every company in the world thought they needed to have Facebook, Google+, Twitter, LinkedIn and so on. It was a serious case of FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) as opposed to a genuine business case for social media.
I suspect we're going to see small and medium companies take a view that maintaining a presence on social media is still not generating ROI. As a result they'll consolidate to fewer social media platforms and perhaps at some point none at all.
If SMEs (or SMBs as they're known in the US) take this approach, big companies will slowly follow I'm sure.
The last time that happened was when the users were the customers. But users don't want to pay for anything anymore.
Doesn't seem to work on mobile tho
Did you try the Android "Request Desktop Site" checkbox?
Edit: just saw that Zem says that works: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11835060
Edit 2: Jeswin says it isn't useable: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11834996
I'm currently not that dependent on Messenger since most people just text or call me anyway. The rest of Facebook I usually avoid anyway as it's in a different wavelength than I am.
Judging by your comments you're not going to use the app period. You can just say so instead of creating artificial reasons which don't hold true for you anyways.
And on my old phone (a venerable HTC Desire HD), Facebook's decision to make me install Messenger in addition to the regular app some time ago was the turning point from low latency and good user experience to overall lag in the phone.
This does not change my mind about banning all Facebook apps from my devices, it just means even less Facebook for me.
[0] http://www.cnet.com/how-to/facebook-changed-your-e-mail-addr...!
They changed it on FB, not in people’s phones.
Tinfoil appears to be an app to specifically work around the fact that browsers can leak more information than the app would.
So when choosing between a lot of bad and propietary options for chat, fb messaging was best.
Except you can't and shouldn't trust FB to make client software; they take to many permissions, they might mess with your (contact) data - the apps have an inflated sense of urgency (hangouts is guilty of this too). And they are resource hungry.
And as fb chat is generally (for me) somewhat asynchronous, the web client was perfect: I could see if there were any new messages, and if there were any new notifications at the same time.
Moving this to one platform, for me, kills the product. At least on mobile. And if I can't use it on mobile, I'll probably slowly stop using it altogether.
For me it's mainly bad, because I see no clear alternative. Facebook was the one silo I could reliably reach most acquaintances. I'm not on snapchat, but even if I was, there are people I might occasionally reach out to on fb, that I probably won't contact/be contacted by on snapchat. Google social efforts is a joke, and many people don't really use email for personal communication.
The rest less so. Looking at my iOS phone's options, I believe I can disable access to pretty much any data the browser doesn't have, including notifications. What am I missing?
[ed: About notifications - I think the point there is more a cultural point. I don't want to send you a fb message at 3 am your time if I think it might wake you up.]
No problem. It's not there's conversations with dead people in there or anything.
There are plenty of reasons to dislike the move, but this isn't one.
- you can't disable notifications - you can't secure your app (aka Pin protection or a password) - huge battery drain as it is constantly connected to the internet.
The web app is easy. You log in and you check your messages. An alternative for android that I have found for Android is called fast Facebook. It shows a web view of the chat and ignores the market:// redirects. Which is already better.
You absolutely can mute conversations, tap the (i) at the top of each convo, very first menu option should be "Notifications".
With you on everything else.
Settings > messenger > notifications > toggle for allow notifications, or to modify them if you prefer.
If there was a higher class crowd on FB I would probably use it more but for me it ended up being a bunch of people from my hometown / high school who are angry, usually at other ethnic groups and don't seem wildly successful in their own right.
If I do want to login, I just wait until I'm at a computer. The standalone Messenger app is horrible for permissions and should be avoided at all costs. If you can muster the strength to delete FB, even better. I'm able to very easily not feel tempted to login to that cesspool so I haven't needed to delete mine.
Most of the time, if someone complains about "stupid discussions/content" or anything alike, I feel that facebook just isn't used in its full potential.
I unfollowed/unfriended/blocked all the connections to people who produce content which isn't enriching my browsing experience. As a result I follow around 10% of my facebook friends, which is a set of about 200 connections with (mostly) valuable content.
It's about drawing a line. I drew that line two years ago, and not once have I looked back or otherwise felt any semblance of regret or frustration from it. Among SMS, email, Telegram, Google+/Hangouts, ordinary phone calls, snail mail, in-person, and the cornucopia of other communications options out there, there's zero reason to put up with Facebook's nonsense.
You can fix that by removing your birthday from Facebook. I did that one year and it turned out as expected, people only wish you happy birthday on Facebook, because Facebook more or less tells them to.
I decided against because it was so useful as an "every once in a while" inbox for people who wouldn't have been able to reach me otherwise: a girl I met at a party, a cousin from Australia who happened to be in town for a couple of days, etc etc. The former would either never find me (depending on how big the party was) and the latter would have to jump through the hoops of chaining phone numbers through our large extended family. Both of those are handily coopted by having an almost-universal directory, with customizable amounts of information displayed, along with photos so you know it's the right profile.
This is typical trope of the "why I have to be on FB." Download everyones contact and or sync to your address book. When people are in town they text you or email you. Trust me it works. People found each other just fine before FB and they can just find now.
Um, did you actually read my comment? Roughly half ofit was dedicated to the fact that being able to find me by just my name and photo is easier than trying to track down my phone number; I'm not sure how you missed that....
Why do you think it would be any easier to find my email address? If anything, connecting us across my extended family would be a lot harder through finding a bunch of emails than finding a bunch of email addresses. I honestly don't know what reality you're imagining where everybody has the email address of everybody they know.
Same thing here, I drew this line about 5 years ago. Now everybody knows that the only reliable means to communicate remotely with me are : Emails/Signal, or regular phone calls/SMS as a fallback.
Only people worth talking to (family and close friends), do the effort of reaching me on my preferred communication channel.
Result: more free time to do interesting and productive things and people aren't bothering me as much. I have taken control of my life and I'm not being pushed around to do things based on notifications or desire for artificial status(likes, retweet, stars). Stop using these services that sell your privacy, control your communication, make hostile changes and in the end do not care about you.
Pretty basic.
Some users post contact info in their profile, so there is the possibility for messaging (email). Yes, there are policies, and structure and many good things - I'm not sure that means that HN isn't a social network of sorts?
I suppose it might boil down to a technicality, but I always read "social network" as a graph that describes how a group is connected - not as some strict technological definition. So a bunch of people that informally meet at a cafe to discuss politics, art and other topics can be described as a social network.
As a side note, my company recently had a meeting with execs of our national branch of facebook, and after that meeting about 50% of our execs went and deleted their account...
I am interested, can you please elaborate ? (Feel free to email me - see my profile - if it is sensitive)
The issue was the "product"s (i.e regular people) privacy and the attitude towards them by the local FB management.
Screw you Facebook.