If you have Facebook on your phone, and you have tried to check your messages recently, you will have been asked to download Facebook Messenger.
For some apparently irritating reason, Facebook has decided that users can no longer reply to their private messages using the Facebook app. Instead, Facebook-users are now being forced to download a totally separate app to see their messages.
As happens any time Facebook makes any changes to their online offerings, the world has lost its collective shit.
People are irritated because:
1. Partly, there have been concerns about the privacy settings on the Messenger app.
To download the app in the first place, you have to give it access to the majority of your smartphone’s features including photos and videos, audio recordings, location, wi-fi, calendar phone numbers, text messages and contacts. However, as some sites have pointed out, these permissions are very similar to the existing Facebook app – and also similar to other apps like WhatsApp, Snapchat and Instagram. It’s worth keeping in mind that Facebook Messenger can still collect and use your data for advertising purposes.
Top Comments
As a different fix, it's possible to clear Facebook's data (from "Manage Apps") and it works again for a while. Although this may require users to log in again, and it may be a bit unpleasant for those who have 2 way verification enabled. not a big deal at all, though.
PS: on HTC One m7, you can simply disable the messenger app and seems to be working as well, after installing it. Might work with other android handsets with built-in disabling function. No root needed!
Not only does this no longer work but if you uninstall messenger you can no longer even see when you receive a new message on the Facebook app as a messenger symbol is there instead!