I almost never use the Facebook website or app, but I haven't quit for the sole reason of Facebook Messenger. I still find it the most convenient means to contact my family and friends who are living overseas because Facebook is still widely used amongst these people.

I've tried to move my friends onto alternative means of communication, predominately Signal, so I could disassociate myself from Facebook, but my friends just don't stick it out. We converse as per usual over the first couple of months, but then their replies slowly dwindle down and if I go back and message them again over Facebook Messenger they respond as soon as they see the message.

Although them not moving to Signal is a pain for me, it's a bigger pain for them to move to an alternative messenger. Why would they want to use two different applications to message friends, let alone to just message one friend. A lot of these people aren't the technologically minded folk of Hacker News, these are the type of people who are Facebooks primary target audience. They don't care about how invasive Facebook can be with advertising or that their communications actually aren't that private.

I would love to see all my friends and family messaging me over some encrypted and decentralised messaging application so I can leave Facebook for good, unfortunately I just don't see that happening for the circle of friends and family I have.