Facebook Messenger Now Requires a Facebook Account To Join (inputmag.com) 42
If you want to sign up for Facebook Messenger, you can no longer escape Big Blue -- you'll need an account from now on. From a report: The company has stopped allowing new users to join using a phone number. "We found that the vast majority of people who use Messenger already log in through Facebook and we want to simplify the process," a spokesperson told VentureBeat. "If you already use Messenger without a Facebook account, no need to do anything." Facebook has said that Messenger has over 1.3 billion users. The company spun messaging out of its main app in order to create Messenger, and in 2015 began allowing users to join without a Facebook account. The app has slowly begun featuring advertising, and businesses can provide customer service through Messenger as well.
Huh? (Score:5, Funny)
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This is exactly what I was thinking as well...
Since when did Facebook become Big Blue?
Re:Huh? (Score:4, Funny)
Facebook is Obese Blue.
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From the same people who keep misusing the Digital Equipment Corp logo.
Re: Huh? (Score:2)
Since when did Facebook become Big Blue?
Since Zuck became fabulously wealthy and still couldn't get laid... over time, the swelling can become quite painful.
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It's the sequel to Escape From LA and Escape From NY.
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Escape from IBM??
That sequel was even worse than the original. Kurt Russell was completely wrong for the part.
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Does Candy ever answer the door?
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He used to. [imdb.com]
Re: Might as well call it the Meat Market (Score:1)
I tell my wife to get her clothes off and get upstairs, and Iâ(TM)ll join her in 20 minutes.
Big Blue (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:2, Redundant)
This is Slashdot my friend. Sarcasm requires a tag to point it out. Those with mod points are capricious folk, if experience with Slashdot mod points have taught me anything.
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Those of us with mod points are invariably crotchety old trolls.
You need just the right mix of troll, outrage, and calm sensibility to make this circus work. Sorta like professional wrestling.
Re: Big Blue (Score:1)
Whoosh!
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Well, in my days, a facebook was a college sudents directory, not a fucking privacy-raping social network for imbeciles.
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The good old days.
Re: Big Blue (Score:2)
Well it was a privacy raping college directory, anyway.
Facebook ALWAYS was completely horrifying on privacy
"The app has slowly begun featuring advertising" (Score:3)
Some businesses... (Score:4, Interesting)
... will screw themselves doing this.
So do businesses lose customers who have dropped out of -- or never joined -- Facebook or do they provide alternate methods of providing customer service? I can think a quite a few people who do not use FB and would never join just so they could get in touch with a company's customer service department. And I can also see some companies insist that Messenger will be the only means of getting customer service. They won't businesses that I'll deal with and if they don't care that's just fine with me. I've disabled the damned application on my phone anyway.
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Who use it as an option or who use it exclusively? I don't know any who use it exclusively. I know many that provide it as an option.
Amazon (or rather Whole Foods) is an example.
KLM, British Airways, and a few other low cost airlines are an example who I've dealt with.
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Some. Plenty of businesses forego having a real webpage, but instead have a Facebook webpage. For me, that means you may as not have a webpage... and that makes no sense in 2019
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So do businesses lose customers who have dropped out of -- or never joined -- Facebook or do they provide alternate methods of providing customer service?
I've never seen a business who uses Messenger as a sole service platform. Now on the flip side when I checked in on my flight the other day I was given the option to receive my boarding pass via email, SMS download link, app, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, or a custom ticket managing app that I googled when I had no clue what it was (and the name of which I've forgotten).
1.3 billion old people? (Score:2)
More like 1.3 nominal members. On paper.
Ask your kid. Get the answer "Dad, nobody uses Facebook anymore! It's for old people!
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Re:1.3 billion old people? (Score:5, Insightful)
They probably all have Instagram. Which means they have Facebook.
Big Blue is watching you (Score:5, Interesting)
I've never heard Facebook called "Big Blue" before today, but I'll go with it.
Facebook Messenger is not simply a messaging app. Facebook is exercising editorial control over what you are allowed to send using Messenger. That also implies that Facebook is checking the content of every message sent.
I figured this out one day when I tried to send a URL to a relative. The URL is to a blog posting that uses satire to make a point: that the US is spending so much money that it is simply impossible to pay for it all by taxing the rich. Well, I guess someone at Facebook doesn't like the blog post or the guy who wrote it.
Check for yourself. Here's the URL: https://iowahawk.typepad.com/iowahawk/2011/03/feed-your-family-on-10-billion-a-day.html [typepad.com]
Try to send this URL through Facebook Messenger. Not only will the message not be sent, but Facebook will lie to you about why it wasn't sent.
After not using Facebook Messenger at all for over 36 hours, I made a single attempt to send that URL to someone just now. I got this message (copy/pasted exactly):
[NOTE: The text in italics was actually links in the original; I added the italics tags by hand after copy/pasting the text.]
So, a single attempt to send one short URL after 36 hours of not using Messenger was posting too frequently? Sure, it's not Facebook blocking content for political reasons.
Except that the second paragraph contradicts the first. The real problem is that the URL "go[es] against our Community Standards". Thanks for being so clumsy with the lying, Facebook.
My family uses Facebook Messenger a lot. I last used it to send a picture of my nephew to my sister. But I wish my family would switch to something else, because I'm not comfortable with Facebook having given itself the power to decide what messages are permitted to be sent over Messenger.
George Orwell imagined a powerful government forcing everyone to be careful about what they say. Well, the government doesn't have to control what we are saying, we have Big Tech companies volunteering to do it.
P.S. Has anyone, ever, in the history of the world, successfully sued any company offering a message platform for allowing bad messages to be sent? Like, if terrorists uses text messages to help coordinate an attack, has the cell phone company ever gotten in trouble for operating a text message platform? I've never heard of such a thing so I am not aware of any plausible reason why Facebook should be scanning content and blocking it. They are doing it because they choose to, not because they could get in trouble if they didn't.
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There is only one proper answer to those suggesting you're better off paying for services with your personal details than your wallet:
"Fuck you; pay me."
Any time someone asks me to justify my lifestyle choices, or asks me why I often choose privacy, or, worse still, tries to tell me I don't need it because I'm not interesting enough, my response is simple:
"I don't have to justify my rights to anyone."
A little spine would serve many well.
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Well, the 9-11 attackers used Hotmail accounts and MS Messenger to communicate, and to my knowledge no one ever took up the issue with Microsoft. Text messages are frequently used to detonate IEDs.
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>"Facebook Messenger is not simply a messaging app. Facebook is exercising editorial control over what you are allowed to send using Messenger."
I am surprised anyone with any tech background would think otherwise. One shouldn't think any different with any other third-party messaging system either (Google Hangouts, or whatever they call it now, for example).
>"But I wish my family would switch to something else, because I'm not comfortable with Facebook"
It starts with you. Say "no" and remove it/disa
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Like, if terrorists uses text messages to help coordinate an attack, has the cell phone company ever gotten in trouble for operating a text message platform? I've never heard of such a thing so I am not aware of any plausible reason why Facebook should be scanning content and blocking it.
Sued? No. Pressured constantly by governments to filter messages, control the spread of terrorist information, and if they don't a threat of laws passed that *do* make them liable? Yes, constantly. Have you missed the major partners of the espionage world (the 5 eyes) attempting continuously to force the likes of Facebook to hand over the keys to the kingdom? They are doing this to placate governments. The use of messenger was also part of the inquiry in election meddling.
I ask with all due respect, but ...
Ha ha ha ha all your data belong to us (Score:3)
Right, it's not because Facebook wants to force you to create an account so they can suck up more of your sweet, sweet data, it's ummm, because reasons. Yeah, that's the ticket!
What? (Score:1)
The ads (Score:1)
Re: The ads (Score:1)
"The gestapo want to know more about you"
FTFY