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Comment by frankacter | Hacker News Reader

>Facebook Messnger was a service named Beluga

Facebook Messenger existed prior to the acquisition. Beluga was a mobile only product that was essentially an acquihire of the 3 member team to work on the existing Messenger mobile platform.

>Facebook was all-in on Messenger as a platform. The project is gone as well.

Facebook Messenger platform is still very much alive and well in both the games and the support / chat bot / reservations space.

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They have pretty much killed messenger for me, I used it everyday to chat with most of my friends but now its bloated and filled with ads so we moved on to different platforms. Its too bad because I loved messenger but now I only open it once a week.

> games / chat bot / reservation space

Yea thats the bloat that killed it for me, I just wanted something that lets me send messages to my close friends, nothing more, nothing less.

I don't think I've ever seen an ad in Messenger. Curious about where you're seeing them? Desktop? Android/iPhone?

if you scroll through your list of conversations on iOS you'll see one

I don't, I looked everywhere I could in the app and don't see a single ad

Just tried, no ads anywhere. I wonder why.

weird I get them every time. maybe it's a regional thing?

no ads here in scandinavia.

I could believe that they slapped too many ads on it (though I've never seen them?), but I struggle to believe that adding games/chatbot/reservation integration bloated messenger on your end. Isn't that all purely server-side integration that doesn't affect you if you're not using it?

Similar happened with LINE. They used to have a Lite app that only had the ability to encrypted chat + send files + make voice/video calls (& had a dark theme with no trackers). But they killed it off last year to make everyone ‘upgrade’ to the full app which is packed to the gills with games, trackers, delivery, etc. & the download is tenfold+ larger. When I didn’t upgrade they swept my account under the rug & despite a supporting Win/Mac/Chromium apps, your primary device must be Android/iOS or they won’t let you access the account (similar to Signal’s shenanigans).

I don’t think I’ve ever seen ads on messenger. Where do you see them?

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