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Comment by ffpip | Hacker News Reader

> presumably many many years of code sits on top of.

Not so many, since they tried to link all 3 only few years ago

https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/6/18253472/mark-zuckerberg-f...

That may be the case for Instagram, which was developed separately and then acquired, and which still uses separate accounts that AFAIK can be created without a Facebook account, although they can be connected to one.

Messenger though has always just been the chat function on Facebook, which can nowadays also be used via a dedicated website/app if you like. It doesn't even have separate account infrastructure on the backend, unlike Instagram. Looks like they're getting around that by essentially creating a second Facebook account, with social media features disabled.

There has been an option to create messenger only accout (so you could do that for your grandma who would not have figured facebook anyways, but you can send her photos now)

That’s a ridiculous use case, only grandmas are on Facebook these days.

Many years ago when I disabled my Facebook account I noticed that Messenger continued to work, so there was definitely some level of separation.

But can you really disable a Facebook account?

Disabling merely means just making yourself invisible, and the Facebook profile unusable, but all the data stays there. If you delete it though, your messenger account is no more.

Even for EU citizen with GDPR?

Disabling is what it says on the tin, giving you the chance to re-enable the account later. Nothing GDPR-violating with that. As long as you are also given an option to actually nuke all your PII.

Anonymize data with a restore capability. Maintains historical continuity for never ending total user awareness.

Messenger was moved into its own product for growth reasons (and app size reasons initially), it’s been separate for a long time

> Messenger though has always just been the chat function on Facebook, which can nowadays also be used via a dedicated website/app if you like

I would venture to say that messenger as a separate service/app has been a thing for at least a decade now.

Back in the day I had a messenger account without a Facebook account, you used to be able to create one with just a phone number

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