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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

#271

Post by Manishearth »

qmr wrote: post #240
Manishearth wrote: post #189

Interestingly, it lets me use the mobile webapp messaging without asking me to do anything. Because the OS I'm on has no Messenger app, and it probably will never have one. So if you spoof your UA string, it may stop bugging you and let you use messenger as usual.

Parent is almost, but not quite, entirely useless. Would you mind sharing with the class what that particular UA is?

Firefox on Firefox OS

Mozilla/5.0 (Mobile; rv:47.0) Gecko/47.0 Firefox/47.0

I don't think its useless. Pretty sure Facebook didn't special case Firefox OS, they special cased android/ios. A random UA string (anything that doesn't say android) would be enough.

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

#272

Post by [deleted] »

qmr wrote: post #240
Manishearth wrote: post #189

Interestingly, it lets me use the mobile webapp messaging without asking me to do anything. Because the OS I'm on has no Messenger app, and it probably will never have one. So if you spoof your UA string, it may stop bugging you and let you use messenger as usual.

Parent is almost, but not quite, entirely useless. Would you mind sharing with the class what that particular UA is?

[deleted]

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

#273

Post by [deleted] »

qmr wrote: post #240
Manishearth wrote: post #189

Interestingly, it lets me use the mobile webapp messaging without asking me to do anything. Because the OS I'm on has no Messenger app, and it probably will never have one. So if you spoof your UA string, it may stop bugging you and let you use messenger as usual.

Parent is almost, but not quite, entirely useless. Would you mind sharing with the class what that particular UA is?

[deleted]

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

#274

Post by cylinder »

tdkl wrote: post #122
robocat wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Thank you, this is the way to keep accessing messages in the browser. Deleting Messenger app again.

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

#275

Post by r2dnb »

tyfon wrote: post #194
areyoucrazy wrote: post #73

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…

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)

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

#276

Post by Nullabillity »

draw_down wrote: post #264
oneloop wrote: post #230

It's really sad to me to see a bunch of intelligent people here being led like sheep by Facebook (no, this isn't a sheeple post, hear me out) Virtually everyone here complains "Facebook does XYZ really bad but I still use them because all my friends are there". I have a solution. Why don't you get all your friends off there? Pick a platform that you really like and start evangelising. The only reason why Facebook has…

It's not clear to me why I should be upset that messaging was split out from one app to another? Why is that "being led like sheep"?

It's not that you have to install two apps instead of one, it's that you have to install one app instead of none. Previously you could access it from any web browser.

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

#277

Post by lucb1e »

wodenokoto wrote: post #136
codeka wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ba…

> 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.

More likely the chat team couldn't read your contacts through your web browser and decided to do something about it.

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

#278

Post by eddieroger »

cisstrd wrote: post #267
oneloop wrote: post #230

It's really sad to me to see a bunch of intelligent people here being led like sheep by Facebook (no, this isn't a sheeple post, hear me out) Virtually everyone here complains "Facebook does XYZ really bad but I still use them because all my friends are there". I have a solution. Why don't you get all your friends off there? Pick a platform that you really like and start evangelising. The only reason why Facebook has…

Then the gravitational pull you have on your friends and family seem to be far greater than what I have. Because besides incredibly few exceptions no one uses another Smartphone App for me, no one wants to have an explanation how IRC works, and E-Mails seem to be good for everything but writing to me. No one will change their behaviour in any regard just for me. Maybe because I am not one trying to force something do…

I was thinking something along similar lines. It's not like I brought my friends to Facebook in the first place - we all just ended up there. Even worse, so did my parents and their friends. If I had brought them to Facebook in the first place, that'd be one thing, but it is so big it has it's own pull, and honestly I don't think I can compete with that. What's more is I don't want to - if I have to hard sell someone on switching to Slack, for example, I'm now the Slack expert to them forever.

The shame of it is that the alternative is miss stuff, and who wants to do that? I would rather deal with a shitty Facebook app on my phone that I can force quit when I'm done with it than feel like a self-exiled citizen of my own community. It's defeatist, but whatever - humans are social creatures for the most part, and I don't want to separate from the herd over something stupid like an app on my phone.

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

#279

Post by calsy »

So much complaining. The web app version is crap, of course they want to move people over to the app. Why waste resources on an inferior web version when they can focus their attention on the very successful mobile app. Its just good business sense and seeing that 99.9999999999% of Facebook users already have Messenger installed, its a non issue.

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

#280

Post by lucb1e »

Zpalmtree wrote: post #238

I really hate using Facebook in general, and very rarely have to use it for group projects. I'm loathe to even load the website on my phone, so this is an awful update...

I would encourage you to not give them what they want. Just use a computer/laptop when chatting with some project group (that's what I did back when Telegram and Slack didn't exist yet).
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