Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
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!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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.
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.
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).
I'm thinking, Facebook Massager Lite will make many lonely women happy, even if it is single-speed as the name suggests.
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).
I still remember when the entire OS including apps would have taken less then that..