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?
Matrix with a facebook messenger bridge? I know just the one finnish instance that offers bridging (pikaviestin.fi), though. I host my own home server.
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 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.
So now people relying on the Lite variants will not be able to chat anymore, as Facebook Lite requires Messenger Lite a little time after it got released?
Yeah I just turned off every notification from Messenger Lite after seeing that. Next month I might just uninstall it completely, or opt for the Matrix bridge.
I’m also on the uninstall boat with y’all, for this reason. Lucky me, I haven’t used messenger in a year so when I saw the notification didn’t hesitate. Haven’t logged on FB in years so I doubt anyone will try to reach me there.
At least on my phone I could swipe the notification a bit to the left to reveal the cog, “disable notifications”, and disable the “standard” category of notifications.
In other news, there’s no way in hell I’m installing the full app. People texting me there will just have to wait until I’m by a computer.
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.
Probably nothing. I haven’t heard of other apps being blocked. But Beeper has been running for like a couple of years now (but recently changed to a freemium model, before it was subscription only and had some people had been on the waiting list for a year+, they said they are aiming to get down to no wait in the next 3 months, and that was probably a month or two ago).
If you think it’s at risk of being blocked, that doesn’t mean you can’t make hay while the sun is shining 🙂
I’m curious if there’s a solution not so much for convenience on android, but it would be a game changer for Linux phones where WhatsApp and Facebook messager is not available at all except in the web interfaces. :)
It seems Whatsapp wants to keep their secure image, and doesn’t allow third party apps. Your only choice is basically to give the third party app your login details, which is against the Ts & Cs.
Facebook provides a way to authorise third party apps and grant them access to your data. It seems to be a different end goal, and I couldn’t find anything about facebook banning peoples accounts or even blocking third party apps.
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.
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 🙂
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Matrix with a facebook messenger bridge? I know just the one finnish instance that offers bridging (pikaviestin.fi), though. I host my own home server.
This probably won’t work for long since they’re rolling out E2EE for Messenger.
It works with whatsapp.
Oh so it’s just basically a different UI over WhatsApp?
No. Due to how whatsapp works, you have to have a phone with whatsapp installed, somewhere.
The matrix bridge connects to that, and “puppets” your account, bringin those chats into your matrix account.
Matrix can bridge to a ton of different chat services, but each one can work a little differently. They usually don’t support voice and video.
Matrix is what’s behind the scenes for beeper, for example.
Ahh gotcha. Sounds neat!
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No
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Wow. Rough.
It’ll be a good excuse to make anyone who wants to talk to you, use something else.
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!
Probably time to bridge from XMPP then
Welp that’s not happening, so long Myspace, I mean book of faces
Just gonna leave this here: https://www.signal.org/
Well, family at least is going to be willing to switch to signal…
No, they don’t.
Lol yeah not gonna happen.
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.
They didn’t miss the boat, they straight up ignored it. Nothing has changed so why should their poorly reasoned decision?
Nope.
It’ll die.
We’re all on another app anyway.
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.
So now people relying on the Lite variants will not be able to chat anymore, as Facebook Lite requires Messenger Lite a little time after it got released?
And they put a notification on your phone about it that you can’t remove… this infuriates me more than it should
You’re right, I did not even notice the persistent notification! What a unnecessarily annoying move. This deserved an early bird uninstall for me…
Yeah I uninstalled as soon as I realised it was a persistent notification. Fuck that.
Yeah I just turned off every notification from Messenger Lite after seeing that. Next month I might just uninstall it completely, or opt for the Matrix bridge.
Another reason my phone is rooted. I want to have the final say in whether I can remove a notification or not on my phone.
I’m also on the uninstall boat with y’all, for this reason. Lucky me, I haven’t used messenger in a year so when I saw the notification didn’t hesitate. Haven’t logged on FB in years so I doubt anyone will try to reach me there.
At least on my phone I could swipe the notification a bit to the left to reveal the cog, “disable notifications”, and disable the “standard” category of notifications.
In other news, there’s no way in hell I’m installing the full app. People texting me there will just have to wait until I’m by a computer.
Yes, but that is the same notification category as your default one for messages, so disabling it will result in no message notifications at all.
Lots of options aside from Facebook.
Not if you need to communicate with people who use facebook.
Lots of options for other people
/s
Not if it’s them that need to communicate with me.
This sucks.
Can’t ditch it completely due to family, but got a few more contacts over on Signal after this announcement.
I don’t use Facebook so I don’t know -
Why can’t you just have a group text with your family.
Because SMS doesn’t support group chats and MMS is expensive garbage (50c/300kb is fucked)
Just log in to Facebook on desktop every couple of days. If they want speedy responses, they will know yto try an aternative medium.
Well, at least the full app has the opt-in E2EE chats.
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.
What keeps this from being blocked by the service providers like any other third party app?
Probably nothing. I haven’t heard of other apps being blocked. But Beeper has been running for like a couple of years now (but recently changed to a freemium model, before it was subscription only and had some people had been on the waiting list for a year+, they said they are aiming to get down to no wait in the next 3 months, and that was probably a month or two ago).
If you think it’s at risk of being blocked, that doesn’t mean you can’t make hay while the sun is shining 🙂
At least for third party WhatsApp clients, they have tended to go down by not only seizing to work, but with WhatsApp temporarily blocking any account connecting from them.
I’m curious if there’s a solution not so much for convenience on android, but it would be a game changer for Linux phones where WhatsApp and Facebook messager is not available at all except in the web interfaces. :)
It seems Whatsapp wants to keep their secure image, and doesn’t allow third party apps. Your only choice is basically to give the third party app your login details, which is against the Ts & Cs.
Facebook provides a way to authorise third party apps and grant them access to your data. It seems to be a different end goal, and I couldn’t find anything about facebook banning peoples accounts or even blocking third party apps.
NIce! Thanks :)
Does it support image attachments sent via Messenger?
Yes, all file attachmemts. See chart here.
Some quirks that I think are notable:
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.