I have not found any news article on this on a whim. Because my friends and family, I need to use Facebook Messenger, and Messenger Lite was a OK client - lightweight, no unnecessary features, etc., compared to the regular Messenger app.
Now I'm a little torn, having a Meta app on my phone is already bad, but having to downgrade to the bloated Messenger app? Not sure I will make a change. What are your thoughts?
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I swear my battery life improved after I uninstalled messenger for a while and got worse after reinstalling recently.
I wouldn't have installed it except I was in the process of getting back in touch with a few old friends. Was totally worth it for that.
I'm on the same page. I would prefer not having those apps installed or even an account, but my friends are more worth to me than my IT ideals.
It's too bad that your friendship isn't more important than ten minutes of inconvenience for them to install a different app or to give you their actual phone number.
I find that you're making a lot of assumptions on my friendships based on my 4 lines comment.
I do chat with my friends via SMS or phone cause I indeed have their number. But you can't deny that SMS for group chats is pretty gruesome.
Based on that, everybody is used to those popular chat apps and have their other group chats on them. Why would I make them change when they work for what's intended? Privacy is the best argument, but they may not all care enough to not find it bothering. So I don't bother ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Live and let live
They dont work for what's intended. Its an illusion to pull money from your content and your potential ad revenue.
Thats not getting into any of the other sociological effects of a huge amount of people getting their daily news from Facebook message headlines.
It's exactly what social media platforms, particularly Facebook, want. They want you to feel locked in because your friends are there
I don't know why people don't just use more SMS. You don't need all the fancy bells and whistles, it shouldn't change the conversation you're having, especially with the gradual rollout of rich messages, and it has a wider audience than Facebook will ever have. More people have SMS than have Facebook
Everyone outside of the U.S. almost assuredly still has SMS capabilities, it's just not common utilized because everyone is already on WhatsApp or Telegram. It's where their friends are, locking them into the ecosystem, which is exactly what I just said. And I would be willing to wager the only reason WhatsApp really got huge was because SMS hasn't always been free to use and may still not be free in some countries and with some plans.
I wasn't speaking to privacy specifically, but where all your friends are.
If you want privacy, then you shouldn't be using Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp anyway, considering both are owned by Meta and their privacy track record is shaky at best.
Signal is a great choice, but we get back to the main point where not everyone is on Signal, and once you are on Signal you're locked in to using Signal and must have their app to participate in the conversation.
My point wasn't that SMS is better, but it's simpler and more widely available and doesn't require a standalone application to use.
Ideally we would use an open standard like the Matrix standard to communicate, that way you can download whatever application you want and have all the privacy you could ever desire, but not have to download some random messaging application just to catch up from Gary from primary school
I wish matrix would catch on too. Basically every non US app is still tied to a damn phone number for auth, so it's not better than sms for mobility anyway.
I'm not on board with sms being a better service in general, but it's kind of difficult to argue that other messaging services are superior when sms is the only one designed to be accessible without internet access.
I've found the same thing with the IG and FB apps which is why I don't use them. I stick to the mobile web versions but they have made it difficult to message from the android mobile web without extra steps like desktop mode. Even then there can be missing functionality.
There was also an article earlier this year where they were purposely "testing" the apps that forcibly drained some user batteries quickly without a care for the actual users affected. Since I'm often using my phone for navigation in the woods I want as much battery life as possible please.
Anyways if it wasn't for older friends and family members I would no longer be using FB.
Certainly a argument can be made for this. For me it is the extended family and contacts from hobbies /sports. Without FB they would have completely faded out of my life. This low level method maintains a loose family connections once maintained by the senior family members that have long since passed. As for the others yes completely disappear from your life...
Of course it did. They're tracking everything you do, and everywhere you go, even when the app isn't running. Don't believe me? Install the Duck Duck Go browser and enable App Tracking Protection. You will be shocked by the amount of shit so many apps track in the background, but Facebook is one of the worst.