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Facebook Releases Messenger Lite For People On Slower Networks and With Old and Basic Android Phones (cnet.com) 79

Posted by msmash from the good-things dept.
Facebook has launched a slimmed-down version of its popular Messenger app in an effort to appeal to its users in countries with slower internet access. The app is called Messenger Lite, and it is also aimed at users who have basic Android smartphones. From a CNET article: Facebook Messenger Lite takes up a much smaller amount of a phone's storage --just 10 megabytes -- than the full-fat app that most users have installed on their phones, and it has been pared back so that it runs nippily over slower than average network speeds. It is the companion app to Facebook Lite, a stripped-down version of the social network, also for old Android phones, launched in 2015. The app's launch is one cog in the wheel of Facebook's strategy to make the social network and the internet as a whole more accessible to users in the developing world. One of Facebook's stated aims is to bring the next 3 billion people online and it has a number of initiatives to that end, including internet.org, Free Basics and its Lite apps.
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Facebook Releases Messenger Lite For People On Slower Networks and With Old and Basic Android Phones More

Facebook Releases Messenger Lite For People On Slower Networks and With Old and Basic Android Phones

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  • Yes, cause that is exactly why grandma doesn't use Facebook.

    On the other hand, I'd wager that the personal information stealing is what really sucks up the bandwidth when using Facebook. Has that part been remedied as well? No?

    • Yes, cause that is exactly why grandma doesn't use Facebook.

      On the other hand, I'd wager that the personal information stealing is what really sucks up the bandwidth when using Facebook. Has that part been remedied as well? No?

      Speaking of swing and a miss, the concept of stealing information is a foreign one when talking about the worlds largest social media platform.

      That's like looking for honesty during a presidential election debate.

    • Re:Swing and a miss (Score:5, Insightful)

      by gsslay ( 807818 ) on Monday October 03, 2016 @10:56AM (#53004225)
      The one thing it won't be "Lite" on is the permissions it requires, and the harvesting of all the personal data within the phone that it can lay its grubby hands on. You can be assured that it'll be just as thorough as the full-size app.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by johanw ( 1001493 )

        Xprivacy will take care of that.

        • I've been using disa Messenger [www.disa.im] on my Android. I receive "Facebook Messenger" messages without giving Facebook permission to everything, and without other Facebook notifications.

          The other option is to go to www.messenger.com and request Desktop site.

      • The one thing it won't be "Lite" on is the permissions it requires, and the harvesting of all the personal data within the phone that it can lay its grubby hands on. You can be assured that it'll be just as thorough as the full-size app.

        Should this come as a surprise for an app which functionally requires many of the things you critisize it for? Don't like to go back to sending telegrams.

        • functionally requires many of the things you critisize it for

          Most people don't use messenger to communicate with contacts that aren't also FB "friends." So most people don't really need to give it access to contacts.

          on Android Marshmallow, it should be possible to revoke a lot of the unneeded permissions - but not having done it, I don't know how well it works. And on first use, you have to manually approve these permissions.

          • Most people don't use messenger to communicate with contacts that aren't also FB "friends." So most people don't really need to give it access to contacts.

            So what are you complaining about exactly? That this app requests permissions for a shady company that already had them, actually more? Yeah go have a look, the Facebook app has far more permissions than the Messenger app.

            Also Contacts is not about being or not being Facebook friends, it's about identifying phone numbers linked to your account for fallback, which is bloody useful when your wifi suddenly drops out or you go from having 4G to f-you in the middle of talking to someone. With just a single click

            • Also Contacts is not about being or not being Facebook friends, it's about identifying phone numbers linked to your account for fallback

              That's if you use Messenger for voice. I never have.

              Either way, you don't have to give FB's apps permission to Contacts if you don't want to anymore.

              • That's if you use Messenger for voice. I never have.

                Have a cookie. I for one couldn't wait to get rid of the battery draining shit experience known as skype.

                Either way, you don't have to give FB's apps permission to Contacts if you don't want to anymore.

                You also don't have to leave the barn doors open even if all the horses have left.

                • Have a cookie. I for one couldn't wait to get rid of the battery draining shit experience known as skype.

                  You know that phones can make voice calls, right? And it's even cross-platform.

    • They'll trim features before they stop sucking up all your personal info.

      Selling your information gets them money. Delivering features only adds to their bandwidth and electric bills.

      A useful side effect of capitalism---you may be nothing more than a revenue pump, but at least their motives are simple to understand.

  • 3 Billion Marks (Score:5, Informative)

    by jenningsthecat ( 1525947 ) on Monday October 03, 2016 @10:09AM (#53003899)

    One of Facebook's stated aims is to bring the next 3 billion people online

    One of Facebook's implicit aims is to line up the next 3 billion suckers for privacy invasion, data mining, and targeted advertising. FTFY.

    • For what it's worth they are spying on you anyway, even if you don't have an account. Every time you see a like button--whether you click it or not, you are being facebooked. Every time someone tags you in a picture (even though you don't have an account,) you are being facebooked.

      At the end of the day you are better off having an account (even if you don't use it) so you can control your exposure. Also, use a script or ad blocker to prevent those stupid like buttons from running their script in the back

      • Not if you are using uMatrix or uBlock (or both) in default "block 3rd party crap" mode.

        • Also, use a script or ad blocker to prevent those stupid like buttons from running their scripts in the background.

          I see you never made it past line 1 of the comment...

    • next 3 billion suckers

      A sucker would imply that people are being taken advantage of, rather than say being provided messaging, voice chat, video chat, group calling, bulletin board style messaging system attached to a social network.

  • I have a high end phone, I was dissatisfied with the Facebook app, so I tried Facebook Lite. And it doesn't even start! All I get to see is the splash screen.

    Very lightweight indeed. If this is the way they're going...

    • You've already proven to FB that your phone can run the full app. They have no incentive to let the lite version work. Probably intentionally blocked.

  • Just let them use the browser (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 03, 2016 @10:25AM (#53003997)

    How about just letting people use the browser to check their facebook messages instead of detecting they're on a mobile device and blocking them from checking their messages to try and force them to install their crappy app? I've found a workaround to do it, but it's cludgy. STOP BLOCKING THE BROWSER FROM CHECKING MESSAGES! Is that so hard Facebook? Nobody wants your crappy app. Not even the lite version.

    • You forget that with the installation of the App, Facebook gets access to all sorts of goodies on your phone that it wouldn't get using mobile.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by phorm ( 591458 )

      What's the workaround? I general just use "Desktop mode" on the mobile but that kinda sucks

    • Nobody wants your crappy app.

      Hmmm, 4 star rating with 33million downloads on the play store. I wish nobody wanted my crappy apps this much.

      The web browser was replaced because it was frigging slow, clunky, didn't have access to video cameras which gimped the feature set, couldn't send notifications which makes it a worthless messaging app, and was all around an arse to open.

      If you don't want to play then don't play. But nearly all messaging programs out there require the use of an app.

    • I speak for myself, but there's no one on Facebook that I really care to talk to on a "Hay I see you're online checking your updates, but let's chat chat chat about nothing" basis. Not having it on my mobile browser has improved my mobile Facebook experience.

  • One thing Messenger Lite won't be able to do is make voice calls, in this first version at least. As a huge growth area for Facebook -- 300 million people use Messenger for voice calling -- it is a feature Chudnovsky is "definitely" looking at adding eventually. "People want to use the same kind of services they use everywhere else, but it definitely requires different types of tech."

    If you could do voice calls over your data network, wouldn't you just use the full version of the app instead of the lite?

    I also love that it's only available to

    people in Kenya, Tunisia, Malaysia, Sri Lanka and Venezuela, and is set to come to other countries later.

    So if you hate the full version sucking your battery dry too bad, you can't use the better one.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Why is this attractive to any user? No cell phone plan anywhere offers unlimited data with limited voice minutes.

  • I have a great idea (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Monday October 03, 2016 @10:29AM (#53004023)

    Usually I sell them, this one is free: I found a way how you could make it so that it needs 0 extra MBs.

    Let people access their messages with the browsers they have already installed, it doesn't get more lightweight than that!

    • Yeah it also doesn't make for a very useful messaging platform. The whole point of an app is instant delivery. It's the reason people didn't use messenger as much in the past, the browser was clunky garbage, still is.

  • Does it have to touch my nipple to send nipply messages? or does it alert me by playing with my nipples? Either way, I am in.

  • "Great".
    Now rename the original app to "Facebook Messenger Monstrously Oversized", the new app to "Facebook Messenger".
    Now rename the original Facebook app to "Facebook Monstrously Oversized", the light app to "Facebook"
    Now re-integrate "Facebook Messenger" with "Facebook".
    Things are now again as they were and should be.
    But it still can be better
    Ditch the whole thing and tell people to use the mobile web version, which will be seriously maintained from now on.
    Incompetent F***book swine. My phone was never

  • Why exclude some from surveillance? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Sure, makes perfect sense: You want to surveil and log the conversations of as many people as you can, so release a version that works better on older phones. Then you can poke your little brown noses into more people's business! Your NSA/CIA/FBI masters will reward you, Failbook.

    WHY ARE YOU STILL USING FACEBOOK???

  • Browser? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Every phone should have a browser. Why the hell don't these companies stop with the apps and create web apps for mobile browsers?

    • Because a browser app can't run in the background, run on startup, suck your contacts lists off your phone, force you to provide your location as soon as you load it, etc. etc. etc.

      Browsers have security. Apps have free reign. Now question why you would want to run Facebook as an app rather than (as I do) access it in "Desktop Site" mode inside the Chrome I already have (which gives you message access but is a pain in the butt to navigate).

  • ...although I guess the separate app has more features. If not it would be pointless.
    I chose to use the Lite version since the "fat" Facebook app was over 100 MB and I'm always running out of space on the apps partition.

  • Released in Kenya, Tunisia, Malaysia, Sri Lanka (Score:5, Informative)

    by trawg ( 308495 ) on Monday October 03, 2016 @11:01AM (#53004265) Homepage

    I immediately wanted to install this to replace the behemoth that is the real Messenger; after diving through the various links (because why would you bother to link the source [fb.com]?), I found this:

    Messenger Lite is starting to roll out to people in Kenya, Tunisia, Malaysia, Sri Lanka and Venezuela. Look for Messenger Lite in other countries in the coming months.

    So I suspect it might not come to "western" regions; I've seen this before with some of the 'basic' versions of apps.

    FWIW I have a Nexus 4, maybe 3 years old, which now feels like a cheap, basic smartphone. Most of those big fat apps like FB Messenger run like an absolute dog. I am not sure why; I think it's a combination of the IO speed of the disk starting to suck plus the fact that I have full encryption on (IIRC the Nexus 5+ series have dedicated hardware that deals more gracefully with full encryption on the device).

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Sky Cry ( 872584 )
      It probably is the encryption. I've had a lot of performance problems with my HTC One M6 - the whole would just freeze for seemingly no reason every now and then, and it would even crash on MTP file transfer regularly. In fact, it was getting worse and worse every day. All of it was fixed by resetting back to the unencrypted storage. Encryption comes with a huge price.

  • Lite == single-speed? (Score:3)

    by bmimatt ( 1021295 ) on Monday October 03, 2016 @11:12AM (#53004323)
    I'm thinking, Facebook Massager Lite will make many lonely women happy, even if it is single-speed as the name suggests.

  • ...and it has been pared back so that it runs nippily over slower than average network speeds. It is the companion app to Facebook Lite, a stripped-down version of the social network...

    Really?

  • Isn't it quite a marketing coup to get folks to think of these devices as a non-threatening "telephone" when they are actually treacherous hand-held computers utterly controlled by someone else?
  • I'll be sure to avoid this like the Plague, just like your more full-featured surveillance platform.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Maybe it wouldn't be necessary to create a "Lite" version if their main app combo (messenger + facebook apps) didn't take 3/4 of a friggin GIGABYTE.

    I can't even fathom what kind of nimrods Zuckerberg hires, but it is certainly strong evidence against his position that self-taught developers are just as good those from degree-awarding institutions.

  • I have a BBQ10 (long story short, I NEED the physical keyboard, is not a matter of preference).

    Even though I kinda-sorta still get security updates for the BaseOS, FaceBook (and WhatsApp) abandoned the platform, and left behind ha mobile website wraped as an app.

    Since BB10 runs android, and since this is planned for older android, as soon as 10.3.3 lands, I will sideload the APKs, and let you know how this behaves. Ditto for FaceBook lite, and WhatsApp.

  • So, how does this beat just simply saving "m.facebook.com" as a bookmark shortcut icon?

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