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?
I can’t uninstall the Facebook app from my phone (not unless I use ADB), so it’s disabled. I uninstalled Messenger. I pinned a post on my FB page that said if people needed to contact me they can email me or text me. I have posted about why folks should leave these platforms until I am blue in the face. If they want to make the switch, they will. If they want to reach out, they will.
Eventually, I want to get an unlocked phone, load a custom ROM, and tell the big platforms to fuck off. I resent how difficult they have made that, and I resent how complacent we have become because of it.
Your phone came with Facebook installed and you can’t uninstall it? Fucking gross! Which phone is that so I know to never buy it?
This could be true of basically any Android phone on specific carriers, at least in the US.
Most phones can be unlocked provided you own it. Easier than you might think!
If I can get a custom ROM to work on my current phone, I’m all for it! I was looking at specific unlocked phone brands because some custom ROMS are optimized for that hardware.
Check out the XDA Forums section for your carrier’s version of whatever model of phone you have. Not all carriers make it trivial (or even possible) to unlock the bootloader and flash custom recovery images, but if it’s possible then someone there has certainly done it.
Thank you for this!
Carrier unlocked and oem bootloader unlocking are two very different things.
In canada, all phones must now be free of carrier locks, but bootloader unlocking is a pain. The us version of my current phone can be oem unlocked.
Mine can’t.
So, i use a lot of adb/shizuku
Are you using video/audio call functionality? If not, get on the beeper waiting list. It supports connecting to facebook messenger, but it doesn’t support video/audio calls.
Thank you for the tip, I’ll sign up. I occasionally use the audio call functionality, but shouldn’t be an issue.
Does it support image attachments sent via Messenger?
Yes, all file attachmemts. See chart here.
Some quirks that I think are notable:
- you can’t create new FB chats. To message someone, you must have already messaged them in the past. You can’t make group chats, but can reply to existing ones.
- There isn’t a thumbs up button like on facebook. I just add a thumbs up emoji reaction to the comment as a replacement. If the other person thumbs up’s, it comes through as an image.
- the above linked table mentions no support for “captioned media messages”. I’m not sure what that means (is it snapchat style image with text over it?) or how to do it but maybe this matters for you
Otherwise FB messenger is one of the better supported platforms on beeper in terms of feature support.
Ah, that’s excellent and just what I need. I’ll probably self host in the next two months.
Just remember the client itself is proprietary (as their business model will be client features), but the bridges are open source.
So you can self-host a facebook bridge and matrix server, but you’ll need to connect to it from a matrix client. You can’t do it from the beeper applications.
The Beeper application is a fork of element, but you should be able to use any matrix client. In the past I’ve self-hosted the facebook bridge and successfully used it with Element so don’t let it put you off 🙂
Yeh, it works pretty great. And they’re working hard to cut the waiting time down.
Ever since Facebook forced the separate Messenger app, I’ve refused to install it. Instead, when I see a message notification, I pop into a browser, head to Facebook.com and push the desktop version. While it’s clunky, I’ve never had to download Messenger.
Same. This will change nothing for me. I refuse their bullshit.
You’re still using their shit, just in a very inconvenient way. In fact, you’re going to their site that contains targeted ads rather than using an ad free app. What a strange hill to die on.
I have exactly one group that insists on communicating this way. Which is why this isn’t a big inconvenience for me. Your point is well taken, but doesn’t really apply in my case. I’m not a user of the service, which is why it’s so easy for me to refuse to install it, and hopefully I can use this to pressure the group to move to discord or some other means of communication. But if not I will continue to use the desktop site rather than install an app.
I’m in the exact same position as you and take the same approach. It’s a hill I’m getting a mildly stubbed toe on.
I’d rather have a slight inconvenience of seeing their ads on their website for the few moments I’d need to send a message than having their spyware of an app tracking everything I do all day long.
Not only is that not possible on both Android and iPhone nowadays, that’s a myth that’s never been remotely proven.
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Yeah, none of that means they’re tracking everything you do all day long.
Man, this is the single most ignorant comment I’ve seen regarding Facebook. You’ve never wondered how a company that offers a free product makes billions?
If that list didn’t have anything on it except “location”, I’d still say that you’re wrong about them not tracking you. How can you read all of the other things on that list and not realize that selling your data is how they make money?
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https://mbasic.facebook.com/ still works. It’s missing some modern niceties, but usable. That’s what I use for occasional messages.
In my head, i read this URL as https://YaBasic.facebook.com
I thought of a neck beard: “m’basic”
https://www.messenger.com/ also works (requires to be running as desktop version). Still not ideal but works.
Why? I mean it’s much better to have the messenger app without all the facebook BS.
Its very easy to disregard facebook in 2023, but Messenger is still one of the more prominent messaging app.
Separate messaging app was the best thing they ever did. I’ve not had Facebook installed since.
I hate to say this, but Facebook Messenger is one of the most fully featured messaging apps. It has its own internal messaging standard that offers iMessage like features between Facebook users, and it also is one of the better SMS apps out there.
I can see why they make it its own app, it’s supposed to replace other messaging apps.
This sucks.
Can’t ditch it completely due to family, but got a few more contacts over on Signal after this announcement.
Just log in to Facebook on desktop every couple of days. If they want speedy responses, they will know yto try an aternative medium.
I have personally made a switch to Delta Chat, and will be e-mailing people from now on. I will be checking facebook occasionally, as I face the same issue as others in this thread: Facebook is the default communication tool in my country. However, I have told everyone I’m connected with, that I no longer have a mobile app for facebook communication on my phone, and will only respond swiftly og they use e-mail or SMS. Let’s see how that goes.
you can go 1 step further and try to use signal, It’s much more convenient.
Your contacts would all need to sign up on Signal as well, while they already have an e-mail address.
Users need to install regular Messenger app instead
No, they don’t.
Lol yeah not gonna happen.
Why still use Facebook when we have the Internet?
Old people are there, some we care about, some have passed away…
There are a few decent communities out there too. Not many, but a few.
In many countries it’s the default communication app
The only and I say the only good thing I can say about Facebook Messenger is… umm…
Can somebody name at least one thing? Really, this app is shit but we must find one at least.
At least in Australia it’s by far the most popular messenger app. It wins by a landslide thanks to the network effect.
Yeah, there’s no real alternative here. Use messenger or Don’t talk to people.
Because we have standards for at least 20 years for messaging I think we can’t say that networking effect is upside of some app, but rather the fact that everyone must use the same app is a downside.
Yes, people using it as the main messaging app is still preferable to the situation in the US where people on different mobile platforms can’t message each other without bullshit compatibility issues and bubble colors.
At least here it doesn’t matter what platform you’re on - including desktops and the web - and as a result nobody cares.
Of course, the same is true for almost every other messaging service too, and there are better ones out there.
Facebook Messenger is probably the closest thing to a modern Yellow Pages as we have. Not everybody is on there, but most people are - even if they haven’t checked their profile in years. With the fall of landlines, it can be the easiest (or only) way to find/contact someone - especially if you’re a GenX or early Millennial because we have all dropped out landlines, but we created most of our social connections before any other messaging service existed. Heck, almost none of the people I knew from college in the 90s even had an email address that they stuck with (assuming I actually had email logs going back thirty years). It’s nice that so many message services exist, but most have no way to “look someone up” the way it’s possible to do on something like messenger/fb. (admittedly - it’s both good and bad)
I suppose there’s a chance that LinkedIn is the other major database of real names out there; I’ve never tried it for locating people.
Marketplace became the defacto replacement for craigslist in my area 😔
Just gonna leave this here: https://www.signal.org/
Well, family at least is going to be willing to switch to signal…
You can use Facebook Lite instead of the main Messenger app if you want to. It’s got messaging integrated into it.
For now…
Install Telegram (or Signal before everyone downvotes me) for your family & friends. For me most of my friends & relatives migrated to it and using for chats between themselves.
Bonus if you are good at programming and can make some very unique telegram bots that do some interesting stuff, like reporting local news.
I use Telegram every day, but without end-to-end encryption (by default and on groups), it’s as private as Facebook Messenger. They can read everything. The only difference is that currently people trust them more than they trust Facebook, but everything turns to shit eventually.
If Signal is too “boring” or no one uses it in your circles, try WhatsApp. Yes, it’s also from Meta, but at least comms are encrypted (same protocol as Signal) and a lot of people use it.
Really bad advice. Trading Meta app for Meta app. It is proprietary so you can be sure WhatsApp does not have encryption like Signal
WhatsApp uses the Signal Protocol. Is it as private as Signal? No, it “leaks” way more metadata. Have I personally checked if they’re encrypting messages? Also no, although others have. Is it possible that they’re doing something “funny” and no longer encrypt? Yes, but is there any suggestion or proof of that being the case?
Should you use WhatsApp? No, but the suggestion above was to use Telegram, a service that doesn’t do end-to-end encryption by default and leaks the same type of data as WhatsApp. Going from Messenger to Telegram is a sideways move. From Messenger to WhatsApp would be at least a small upgrade (with the benefit of having more contacts there than Telegram, at least in some countries).
I understand the point about it also being a Meta app. I guess the question is what do you trust more? Telegram and the people behind it with your plain text messages or a Meta app with end-to-end encryption? I don’t trust either, so I pick encryption.
I’m not anti Telegram or anything like that. It’s a nice app, lots of features, smooth, etc, and I use it, but privacy was never their main priority.
Where can I get info on Telegram storing messages in plain text on their servers? I have asked and searched and all I have seen are hypotheticals but nothing concrete.
I’ve read through the audit they had in 2020 where cloud chats are encrypted using the same MT Proto 2.0 which they also use for the secret chats (E2EE).
The same way that evidence is available, I would also like to see the evidence of cloud chats stored in plain text and not encrypted.
I didn’t say anything about them “storing messages in plain text”. I said that they don’t do E2EE by default and since they have the keys for the TLS that encrypts data in transit, they can read the content of your messages. Encrypting their drives - something that any decent service does - only protects you if someone “steals” a drive: Telegram has the keys and can obviously read the contents of their drives.
I found this Kaspersky blog post which provides a nice tl;dr. They even make the same point as me:
Let’s go straight to the root of the problem: Telegram is a unique messenger with two types of chats: regular and secret. Regular chats are not end-to-end encrypted. Only secret ones are.
No other messenger does this: even the notorious WhatsApp, part of Mark Zuckerberg’s data-hungry empire, uses end-to-end encryption by default. The user doesn’t need to do anything at all, there are no special checkboxes or anything: messages are protected from all outsiders (including the service owners) right out of the box.
[…]
This is not new. Back in 2015, Edward Snowden had this to say about Telegram’s defaults:
I respect @durov, but Ptacek is right: @telegram’s defaults are dangerous. Without a major update, it’s unsafe. [source]
To be clear, what matters is that the plaintext of messages is accessible to the server (or service provider), not whether it’s “stored.” [source]
In practice, they’re no different from Messenger, Slack, Discord or a direct message on Reddit. Most messages on Telegram can be read by them, just like Google can read all messages in your Gmail.
Why is Signal or WhatsApp better? Because they do E2EE for all messages. It doesn’t matter if they forget to encrypt their servers, all they see and store is encrypted messages. You hold the keys, not them.
You mentioned “plain text” specifically - where else would they be holding those plain texts?
So far, there is no evidence to suggest your messages are stored in plain text. And in 2015, Telegram was using MTProto 1.0 for their cloud chat encryption and Secret Chats E2EE. It’s been about 5-6 years since they’ve upgraded to MTProto 2.0 which has been proven to be a sound encryption protocol.
It was Moxie Marlinspike that also made the claim messages are stored in plain text on Telegram’s server with no evidence. And so far, the only thing we have are hypotheticals and nothing of substance to support that claim.
The audit done in 2020 goes over how Telegram encrypts their cloud chats and those encryption keys are not stored on the same servers. While E2EE is preferable, the reason why Telegram works the way it does is because how messages are handled by default.
Hopefully soon they will roll out Secret Group chats. But I do like we all have the option to use Telegram however we want.
If you (user 1) are talking with your friend (user 2) through me (telegram) and I have the encryption keys, then for me (telegram) communications are essentially in plain text. I can even encrypt them 100 times… I have the keys and can read your (user 1 + user 2) messages.
You’re again talking about storing messages (not sure why). Telegram might encrypt their storage (I never claimed they didn’t), but they have the keys and therefore can read what’s stored. They also have the keys for the messages, so there’s no hypotheticals or claims here: they have the keys for everything, so they can read everything.
E2EE is opt-in and currently only available for direct chats. Unless you manually start a “secret chat”, there’s no E2EE MTProto 2.0 to help you. They can read everything.
The audit done in 2020 goes over how Telegram encrypts their cloud chats and those encryption keys are not stored on the same servers. While E2EE is preferable, the reason why Telegram works the way it does is because how messages are handled by default.
So… Telegram has the keys to decrypt your messages?
I mean, it’s not hard to understand. The party that holds the keys can read the messages.
Messenger supports end-to-end encrypted chats, and more encryption features are rolling out. https://messengernews.fb.com/2023/08/22/expanding-testing-for-end-to-end-encryption-on-messenger/. It’s a huge project to implement encryption given the number of features that have to be rewritten (e.g. scraping URLs to show a preview picture now has to be done client-side rather than server-side)
You (op) use telegram, and make a relay bot that redirects messages to/from fb messenger. You use the app of your choice, and they use the app of theirs. Big downside, is you’re still reliant on fb for messages.
Unfortunately FB Messenger is the defacto way to communicate in some countries - if I refused to use it I’d fail uni as I wouldn’t be able to communicate with group members, I wouldn’t be able to contact most of my family, and the number of friends I can talk to would drop to about 5 (of which most have recently had children and are thus a bit preoccupied)
Just delete every meta/fb app. There are plenty of alternatives now. They will never love you.
If people are still playing within meta’s walls they are lost and won’t be leaving anytime soon.
But all my friends are on there! M-m-my followers!!!
They didn’t miss the boat, they straight up ignored it. Nothing has changed so why should their poorly reasoned decision?
Who tf uses messenger
Australians apparently. That’s what my cousins said as the explanation for why their family chat was on Facebook.
Messenger is the most popular messaging app in Australia by far. #2 is Apple/Facetime (which is about equal with WhatsApp in terms of market share) but there’s a huge gap between #1 and #2.
Everyone in my family 😞
They all have phone numbers you can text and they don’t need to install another app or sign up for anything at least. But I understand when they prefer it and you have a fb account anyways.
Good luck sending photos or holding a video call with the scant 1100 bits provided by an SMS message…
RCS is our last hope…
AFAIK that unfortunately requires using Google Messages (or moving overseas)
I believe they’ve (Google) been somewhat successful in convincing carriers / 3rd party OS devs like Samsung to start implementing RCS in their own messaging apps. There’s even a 3rd party app on iOS that can use it now.
Definitely not. Devs have been asking for an RCS API in Android for ages, and Google hasn’t added it.
Sharing media over MMS is a garbage experience. I would need to convince them to use something reasonable, which is a lost cause.
Texting still exists.
Being spied on by facebook, microsoft, and google is not worth the risk to me personally.
Again, who tf uses messenger?
Again, who tf uses messenger?
The entire nation of Poland
Not me
Wait you’re not an entire nation are you?
I just like to be proud of improving digital space around me
You’d rather be spied on by your carrier… Got it.
Carrier can’t spy on you if iMessage and signal!
Better them than companies who advertise to me directly
I don’t use either one, for very obvious reasons
In our country, texting (through the built-in Messenger app) is mostly done as an emergency measure, as most people here use Meta’s other messaging app, WhatsApp.
Ask them to go physically to your house if they ever need to tell you something urgent. If they refuse to, good riddance
Oh ya I’ll just tell my grandparents to drive 10-12 hours to get to the other side of the island every time they want to talk to me or see my face
@cnnrduncan @csolisr My grandparents are on Signal 🤷
Incredibly based grandparents
Considering I live 2000 miles away from them and do not want them randomly showing up at my door, no thanks lol.
Who tf uses messenger
Facebook Messenger is the 2nd largest chat/messaging client behind Whatsapp, also a Meta service.
Over 3 billion users combined.
So, to answer your question: “Nearly everybody.”
Over 3 billion users combined.
So, to answer your question: “Nearly everybody.”
That’s overly dramatic, we’re over 8 billion already… so it’s “Nearly half of everybody” 😜
Only the stupidest of humanity.
Well, there goes central Europe
Living in western Europe I would have said no one, but in most of central and eastern Europe is strictly necessary to reach anyone.
Facebook is the main social media in Africa. It’s not a bommer thing there, everyone use it.
The main issue here is how aggressive Fuckbook is when it comes to the messager, since they started to hide it on mobile devices they fucked with every attempt to revive that functionality with a none Fuckbook apps till the creator gave up. They are bad enough with normal clients (most of those died for a reason) but somehow even worse when it comes to the messager!
I wish someone discontinued Meta
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I’ll die before I install Facebook Messenger
Careful. They could be listening.
I hope they are.
Hey Facebook, eat a bag of dicks!
Same. Just have to hold out until the EU makes all messaging apps cross+operable and then I’ll be able to talk to everyone again.
