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