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. Guess I won't be using Messenger any longer.
Folio and Swipe for Facebook use mbasic.facebook.com and are being actively worked on.
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).