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Comment by drcross | Hacker News Reader

Facebook recently disabled their messenger platform on the website, when you click the messages tab it brings you directly to the app store to install their app. This means you have to use the App to message people. The app requires such egregious permissions that I absolutely refuse to install it. It's a shame because it worked perfectly in the past.

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I've been able to use https://mbasic.facebook.com from an Android device for messaging. Not ideal, but better than installing one of their apps.

Yeah I've been trying to use mbasic now, it's obviously a really poor experience. I also like the ease of video calling on Messenger, but I'm still keeping it off my phone. Hopefully Google Duo is better. My phone got very laggy after I installed Messenger as well. I'm very suspicious of Facebook.

If you have Chrome for Android (only browser/device I've tested this on) you can check request desktop site for https://m.facebook.com. You'll stay on the mobile version, maintain all of the mobile functionality of the website plus access to messages without the download redirect.

I agree with your assessment of Messages and I also don't have either the FB or Messages mobile app installed.

That said, messages are still working for me in Metal (third party FB app) and in my mobile browser. Even if/when they stop working that way, I figure I'll be able to tick the "desktop mode" box in my mobile browser to set the user agent and get it that way. Barring that I can just check those handful of messages I get via my desktop computer.

I guess I just don't depend on FB messaging for anything important so it's less an issue for me. If someone wants to reach me, they can call or text and Hangouts works fine across mobile and desktop on Android, iOS, Windows, OSX, Linux, etc. for group messaging.

They must be A/B testing; I can still access messages on the mobile site (Safari on iPhone 5s).

And, given privacy issues and anecdotal reports of battery drain, I'll just forgo messages on that platform if they make the mobile site change permanent.

It can't be too long until we can run VM's on our phones and isolate all our apps from the main phone OS? This seems like a great need to be filled.

And how long would your battery last?

Paper on iOS includes Messenger functionality in the same app (I'm not a fan of the constant app switching) and seems to avoid the power drain of the regular app.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/paper-stories-from-facebook/...

It still works, you just have to fight it steering you to the app store every step of the way.

I had to borrow someone's phone 2 days ago to send a quick FB message and it took about 10x longer than it should due to it trying to hide the native interface "it's going away soon, install messenger".

Is this an Android vs iOS thing? The Facebook page on my iPhone works very similarly to the desktop page. It doesn't steer me to the app store for any features.

It may be, this was in Chrome on an Android phone. Go to the inbox and it'd pop up app store. Close it, and the browser would be displaying the message about soon having to install messenger instead of inbox. Close that message and the process would repeat.

Only by visiting my friends profile and hitting the message link could I actually break out. It'd still take me to the app store but on close my friend's messages were visible along with the box to send a message.

When exactly did the function disappear for you? I'm still using the website messenger with no issues, but I wonder are my days numbered.

They've also recently added WebNotifications support to the website messenger functionality which leverages the phone notifications as an app would.

I run Android with Chrome and Firefox. On Chrome browser messaging has been disabled from the mobile website, on Firefox it still functions just fine (still redirects to the Play Store frequently however).

You can still use the website for messaging if you use Firefox as your browser (android only).

What about on iOS with fine-grained permissions? Messenger works just fine for me. I've revoked everything except background updates to get notifications.

When will these fine-grained permissions come to Android?

Android 6.0 Marshmallow has fine-grained permissions.

And also Messenger doesn't have end to end encryption, so every message remains in Facebook.

You could use messenger.com with a desktop user-agent. That site works fine on a phone screen.

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