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?
Just gonna leave this here: https://www.signal.org/
I wish someone discontinued Meta
I’ll die before I install Facebook Messenger
Who tf uses messenger
Everyone in my family 😞
Texting still exists.
Being spied on by facebook, microsoft, and google is not worth the risk to me personally.
Again, who tf uses messenger?
You’d rather be spied on by your carrier… Got it.
Better them than companies who advertise to me directly
I don’t use either one, for very obvious reasons
Why still use Facebook when we have the Internet?
Marketplace became the defacto replacement for craigslist in my area 😔
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.
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 🙂
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.
Separate messaging app was the best thing they ever did. I’ve not had Facebook installed since.
Is their messenger still a 150 MB monster that gets updated twice a day?
Yes, and they constantly change how parts of the UI work, most often getting more in the way of efficient actual messaging… It’s really bad.
