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Facebook Releases Messenger Lite For People On Slower Networks and With Old and Basic Android Phones (cnet.com)
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.
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.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
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?), 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).
https://mbasic.facebook.com/messages