Exactly - until legal action happened. I think internet user rights have a LONG way to go, and I can only pray that stuff like "forced to look at insipid, manipulative advertising so you can continue to talk to your family" may indeed become a thing of the past.

I currently have an Inbox of multiple messages from family members awaiting me, except I refuse to log into Facebook to view them. The only remaining notification email I have left enabled for Facebook is exactly that -- private messages. This way I can contact the relevant person elsewhere and ask them what the message was. This is the kind of "bending over backwards" I have to do to avoid the surveillance-capitalism crap I'm coerced towards by these platforms that can do essentially whatever they want AND demand exactly how we are _allowed_ to interact with them. Why can't I use an unofficial Facebook Messenger client and read the <100 bytes of communication my family member wanted to send me? Ahh yes I have to agree to a hundred-page ToS and subject myself to ads and privacy-invading user tracking to see those few bytes. This is fine.