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Facebook disabling messaging in its mobile web app to push people to Messenger

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Re: Facebook disabling messaging in its mobile web app to push people to Messenger

#451

Post by suppressingfire »

galistoca wrote: post #440
suppressingfire wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I call shenanigans for two reasons: 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…

Also, SMS is not guaranteed to reach the recipient in any reasonable timeframe.

Also, if they're supporting desktop clients I again call shenanigans on your argument.

Re: Facebook disabling messaging in its mobile web app to push people to Messenger

#452

Post by Zak »

ohthehugemanate wrote: post #290

so... will it still work on facebook lite? For those of us who avoid the official apps for battery/data consumption, FB Lite is an available middle ground...

It looks like for the moment, yes. FB Lite isn't offered in Google Play for users in wealthy countries, but there are mirrors for the APK.

Re: Facebook disabling messaging in its mobile web app to push people to Messenger

#453

Post by superuser2 »

dvtv75 wrote: post #448
superuser2 wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>2. All of your messages are beholden to a private company, permanently stored in plaintext >3. They analyze said messages to deliver advertisements. Seriously, one time I mentioned buying a Samsung SSD to my friend in chat, and all of a sudden I got a ton of SSD advertisements on the sidebar. Same thing when I mentioned Rick and Morty. These are poor complaints, unless your circle of friends is so insular on the the…

You appear to have no problem with a company building up a profile of your likes and dislikes, so they can try and sell stuff to you. That's fine. Why expect that of others, though?

Because it is overwhelmingly what they deliver. The very edgiest of the edgy use Telegram 1-2% of the time. Exactly one person in my social network installed Signal and he gave up on it after about 2 days. No one would dream of touching GPG. The .5% of the time an email address does not end in @gmail.com, it is a Google Apps account.

Are your friends all Tor developers or something? I just can't imagine a set of family/friends/acquaintances who actually run their own Postfix and care what a public key is.

I'll accept the existence of an advertising profile (I don't see the ads, anyway) before I'lll cease all communication with everyone in my network, which is what it would take to avoid Facebook (or the exact same problem with a different company).

Re: Facebook disabling messaging in its mobile web app to push people to Messenger

#454

Post by goodplay »

garethadams wrote: post #213
goodplay wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tyranny of the defaults goes both ways; If you're software doesn't have sane defaults, I will search for another.

That's interesting, because from your comment history you're in favour of user-specified preferences: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11114154

I am.

Re: Facebook disabling messaging in its mobile web app to push people to Messenger

#455

Post by intrasight »

ceejayoz wrote: post #263
qmr wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The amount of stupid hacks I have to go through to make Android usable is making me consider trying out iPhone.

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.

That's why Android is winning. The easy things are easy and the hard things are possible.

Re: Facebook disabling messaging in its mobile web app to push people to Messenger

#457

Post by VintageCool »

Zak wrote: post #447
webvictim wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Re: Facebook disabling messaging in its mobile web app to push people to Messenger

#458

Post by tuxracer »

galistoca wrote: post #441
tuxracer wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Maybe you should go back and read again. > 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 anythin…

> 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.

Re: Facebook disabling messaging in its mobile web app to push people to Messenger

#459

Post by gcr »

kobayashi wrote: post #394
pikachu_is_cool wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a ton of reasons to not use Messenger. 1. The mandatory "seen" indicator 2. All of your messages are beholden to a private company, permanently stored in plaintext 3. They analyze said messages to deliver advertisements. Seriously, one time I mentioned buying a Samsung SSD to my friend in chat, and all of a sudden I got a ton of SSD advertisements on the sidebar. Same thing when I mentioned Rick and Morty. 4.…

I'm interested as to why someone like yourself, a likely tech-savvy HN user, the kind of person who notices how their chats effect ad serving, does not block ads on facebook. Care to share?

Adblocking wouldn't address any of the four points that pikachu_is_cool raised.

For point 3, Facebook could still be analyzing the contents of messages.

Re: Facebook disabling messaging in its mobile web app to push people to Messenger

#460

Post by stirner »

baby wrote: post #343
stirner wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why waste resources on an inferior web version when they can focus their attention on the very successful mobile app. Perhaps because the web version is not limited to the proprietary runtime of a single operating system.

I would think most phones support a messenger app. Except if you have a really old or bare phone, but then it might not even support internet?

There are many devices that are not smartphones.

Yes, most devices support the abstract concept of a messenger app, but they each have their own runtimes and APIs that the app must be written for. Writing a web version supports a huge number of clients in a single pass.

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