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Comment by bauerd | Hacker News Reader

Deleted my Facebook account two months ago, but kept the Messenger for keeping up with a handful of friends. Haven't missed the newsfeed spam a day since! Rest assured you're not missing out

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Is it actually possible to keep messenger without Facebook? Because Facebook is a complete time wasting, spam filled, mind dulling echo chamber platform that I keep going back to due to habit. If I log out or deactivate I completely don't care after a few days, but messenger is essential to me.

Yes, and I didn't know that either until I tried it out. My regular FB account is "deactivated", but Messenger works just fine. They seem to have decoupled both products some time ago.

Wait, that's awesome. I've been using news feed eradicator but now you're telling me that I can delete my Facebook account and still have a messenger account?

Does that messenger account work for "sign in with facebook" buttons? For example, the only way to authenticate with Tinder is a Facebook account.

No, you can't use the Messenger account for authentication. At least for Tinder I can confirm it doesn't work, maybe there's an OAuth provider for Messenger that no one uses, idk

No you cant sign into any other accounts with facebook, well you cant without reactivating it. If you sign into a deactivated facebook account even into a game, or something similar, it will count that as a account sign in and reactivate your account. If you fully delete your account, you wont be able to sign in at all.

They removed that possibility some time ago. Now if you disable your Facebook account, it's reactivated as soon as you log into Messenger. Tried it just a few days ago.

I just tried deactivating, and upon logging in to Messenger (which works) it logged me into Messenger, but not FB.

Sweet!

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