I have not found any news article on this on a whim. Because my friends and family, I need to use Facebook Messenger, and Messenger Lite was a OK client - lightweight, no unnecessary features, etc., compared to the regular Messenger app.
Now I’m a little torn, having a Meta app on my phone is already bad, but having to downgrade to the bloated Messenger app? Not sure I will make a change. What are your thoughts?
Install Telegram (or Signal before everyone downvotes me) for your family & friends. For me most of my friends & relatives migrated to it and using for chats between themselves.
Bonus if you are good at programming and can make some very unique telegram bots that do some interesting stuff, like reporting local news.
You (op) use telegram, and make a relay bot that redirects messages to/from fb messenger. You use the app of your choice, and they use the app of theirs. Big downside, is you’re still reliant on fb for messages.
Can you even make a messenger bot? Last time I checked it had bots, but they were incredibly crappy.
I know of someone who made one a while back, but I don’t know if it would work with the current version of messenger. It’d be a fun project to figure that out, though. I’ll add it to the growing list of fun projects haha
Unfortunately FB Messenger is the defacto way to communicate in some countries - if I refused to use it I’d fail uni as I wouldn’t be able to communicate with group members, I wouldn’t be able to contact most of my family, and the number of friends I can talk to would drop to about 5 (of which most have recently had children and are thus a bit preoccupied)
I use Telegram every day, but without end-to-end encryption (by default and on groups), it’s as private as Facebook Messenger. They can read everything. The only difference is that currently people trust them more than they trust Facebook, but everything turns to shit eventually.
If Signal is too “boring” or no one uses it in your circles, try WhatsApp. Yes, it’s also from Meta, but at least comms are encrypted (same protocol as Signal) and a lot of people use it.
Messenger supports end-to-end encrypted chats, and more encryption features are rolling out. https://messengernews.fb.com/2023/08/22/expanding-testing-for-end-to-end-encryption-on-messenger/. It’s a huge project to implement encryption given the number of features that have to be rewritten (e.g. scraping URLs to show a preview picture now has to be done client-side rather than server-side)
Really bad advice. Trading Meta app for Meta app. It is proprietary so you can be sure WhatsApp does not have encryption like Signal
WhatsApp uses the Signal Protocol. Is it as private as Signal? No, it “leaks” way more metadata. Have I personally checked if they’re encrypting messages? Also no, although others have. Is it possible that they’re doing something “funny” and no longer encrypt? Yes, but is there any suggestion or proof of that being the case?
Should you use WhatsApp? No, but the suggestion above was to use Telegram, a service that doesn’t do end-to-end encryption by default and leaks the same type of data as WhatsApp. Going from Messenger to Telegram is a sideways move. From Messenger to WhatsApp would be at least a small upgrade (with the benefit of having more contacts there than Telegram, at least in some countries).
I understand the point about it also being a Meta app. I guess the question is what do you trust more? Telegram and the people behind it with your plain text messages or a Meta app with end-to-end encryption? I don’t trust either, so I pick encryption.
I’m not anti Telegram or anything like that. It’s a nice app, lots of features, smooth, etc, and I use it, but privacy was never their main priority.
Where can I get info on Telegram storing messages in plain text on their servers? I have asked and searched and all I have seen are hypotheticals but nothing concrete.
I’ve read through the audit they had in 2020 where cloud chats are encrypted using the same MT Proto 2.0 which they also use for the secret chats (E2EE).
The same way that evidence is available, I would also like to see the evidence of cloud chats stored in plain text and not encrypted.
I didn’t say anything about them “storing messages in plain text”. I said that they don’t do E2EE by default and since they have the keys for the TLS that encrypts data in transit, they can read the content of your messages. Encrypting their drives - something that any decent service does - only protects you if someone “steals” a drive: Telegram has the keys and can obviously read the contents of their drives.
I found this Kaspersky blog post which provides a nice tl;dr. They even make the same point as me:
Let’s go straight to the root of the problem: Telegram is a unique messenger with two types of chats: regular and secret. Regular chats are not end-to-end encrypted. Only secret ones are.
No other messenger does this: even the notorious WhatsApp, part of Mark Zuckerberg’s data-hungry empire, uses end-to-end encryption by default. The user doesn’t need to do anything at all, there are no special checkboxes or anything: messages are protected from all outsiders (including the service owners) right out of the box.
[…]
This is not new. Back in 2015, Edward Snowden had this to say about Telegram’s defaults:
I respect @durov, but Ptacek is right: @telegram’s defaults are dangerous. Without a major update, it’s unsafe. [source]
To be clear, what matters is that the plaintext of messages is accessible to the server (or service provider), not whether it’s “stored.” [source]
In practice, they’re no different from Messenger, Slack, Discord or a direct message on Reddit. Most messages on Telegram can be read by them, just like Google can read all messages in your Gmail.
Why is Signal or WhatsApp better? Because they do E2EE for all messages. It doesn’t matter if they forget to encrypt their servers, all they see and store is encrypted messages. You hold the keys, not them.
You mentioned “plain text” specifically - where else would they be holding those plain texts?
So far, there is no evidence to suggest your messages are stored in plain text. And in 2015, Telegram was using MTProto 1.0 for their cloud chat encryption and Secret Chats E2EE. It’s been about 5-6 years since they’ve upgraded to MTProto 2.0 which has been proven to be a sound encryption protocol.
It was Moxie Marlinspike that also made the claim messages are stored in plain text on Telegram’s server with no evidence. And so far, the only thing we have are hypotheticals and nothing of substance to support that claim.
The audit done in 2020 goes over how Telegram encrypts their cloud chats and those encryption keys are not stored on the same servers. While E2EE is preferable, the reason why Telegram works the way it does is because how messages are handled by default.
Hopefully soon they will roll out Secret Group chats. But I do like we all have the option to use Telegram however we want.
If you (user 1) are talking with your friend (user 2) through me (telegram) and I have the encryption keys, then for me (telegram) communications are essentially in plain text. I can even encrypt them 100 times… I have the keys and can read your (user 1 + user 2) messages.
You’re again talking about storing messages (not sure why). Telegram might encrypt their storage (I never claimed they didn’t), but they have the keys and therefore can read what’s stored. They also have the keys for the messages, so there’s no hypotheticals or claims here: they have the keys for everything, so they can read everything.
E2EE is opt-in and currently only available for direct chats. Unless you manually start a “secret chat”, there’s no E2EE MTProto 2.0 to help you. They can read everything.
The audit done in 2020 goes over how Telegram encrypts their cloud chats and those encryption keys are not stored on the same servers. While E2EE is preferable, the reason why Telegram works the way it does is because how messages are handled by default.
So… Telegram has the keys to decrypt your messages?
I mean, it’s not hard to understand. The party that holds the keys can read the messages.
Not incredibly surprising given how little it’s been updated and how things like clicking links doesn’t work. Definitely exhausted by how aggressively things are just getting worse now.
Yeah, both Messenger Lite and Facebook Lite are fucked. Post a photo or video on Facebook Lite and it’s guaranteed to be blurry piece of shit. If it’s shot horizontal, it’s going to be low-res vertical with letterboxing on the top and bottom. I have to hop on the main app just to post a discernable video for my family.
If I didn’t live on the other side of the continent and Facebook were my only real lifeline to my friends and family, I wouldn’t use it at all anymore. But now there’s this sunken-cost fallacy shit on top of it all, and how I get daily memories from the deceased like my father and grandmother. “Hope you’re having fun in Canada, love you, Gram”. Some of these messages are still applicable today, and I don’t know how to separate from that.
All you are saying is its too convenient for you to stop using it. What makes it less convenient is learning about alternative ways to meet the same ends.
You’ll find like a lot of others that giving up control to Facebook doesn’t necessarily equate to the most convenient tool
and I don’t know how to separate from that.
Take screenshots, load them all into a folder and use some kind of gallery widget or app to show you one daily.
I think I’ve seen calendars that will show you an image a day but I don’t know how well you can set images to certain days, etc.
Just delete every meta/fb app. There are plenty of alternatives now. They will never love you.
If people are still playing within meta’s walls they are lost and won’t be leaving anytime soon.
But all my friends are on there! M-m-my followers!!!
They didn’t miss the boat, they straight up ignored it. Nothing has changed so why should their poorly reasoned decision?
Nope.
It’ll die.
We’re all on another app anyway.
Is their messenger still a 150 MB monster that gets updated twice a day?
Yes, and they constantly change how parts of the UI work, most often getting more in the way of efficient actual messaging… It’s really bad.
They cut the size down to 30 MB on iOS in 2019, but they’re back to 110 since (on Android, it’s 60 MB).
EDIT: In terms of updates, they are pretty stable at one update a week on both systems.
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Android 13 here, Messenger is 148mb, last update 11 days ago
I think the Facebook Lite app includes messaging too.
No… I disabled the auto updates.
Well that’s annoying. I only ever use it for if I’m trying to buy something off a stranger on one of those facebook market groups. Which only happens a couple of times a year.
So I guess I will have to install their big version and then uninstall it after I buy the thing.
I have personally made a switch to Delta Chat, and will be e-mailing people from now on. I will be checking facebook occasionally, as I face the same issue as others in this thread: Facebook is the default communication tool in my country. However, I have told everyone I’m connected with, that I no longer have a mobile app for facebook communication on my phone, and will only respond swiftly og they use e-mail or SMS. Let’s see how that goes.
you can go 1 step further and try to use signal, It’s much more convenient.
Your contacts would all need to sign up on Signal as well, while they already have an e-mail address.
You can use Beeper to replace all your communication apps. That way you only have to install one app, and you don’t have to have Meta installed.
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It sounds like a too good to be true situation. Definitely an interesting concept though. Sounds like they use remote servers to connect to the third-party apps using your credentials and then transcribe the messages using the Matrix protocol to the app. Source here and snippet below
Beeper consists of two main components:
- A client app that runs on your devices.
- A web service run by Beeper.
… Beeper’s web service consists of a Matrix homeserver and infrastructure to run open source bridges that connect to 15 different chat networks.
Currently free but also will be a Plus version eventually rolling out, according to the FAQ
For now, everyone has access to all the features of Beeper Plus for free. At some point in 2023, we will begin charging $5-10 per month for Beeper Plus.
Also, no humor is lost on the fact that it is dangerously close to Wuph from The Office…
I signed up for beeper, but realized you can self host a matrix server that uses the same bridges between these chat services.
I was skeptical at first, but it’s been super solid and refreshing to have a single chat app for everything.
How did you do that? I’d love to set something like that up. I keep seeing Matrix mentioned everywhere, but I haven’t looked into it to see exactly what it is.
@Unsustainable @bananahammock @technology Matrix is a protocol for real time communication. Several companies build products using this protocol, including Elemental, Beeper and Rocket Chat.
This is similar to how ActivityPub is a protocol for federated social media. Many projects are built using ActivityPub, including Mastodon, PixelFed, and Lemmy.
@Unsustainable @bananahammock @technology
A “Matrix Bridge” is a computer program that connects to an arbitrary service and presents it as Matrix service. You can connect to that Matrix service with any Matrix client.
For example, this code connects LinkedIn messages to Matrix: https://github.com/beeper/linkedin
Beeper runs Matrix bridges for you as a service. If you don’t want to use that service, you can self-host the bridges.
I signed up for this month’s ago and I’m still not in. Every time I log into the app to check my waitlist, I’m some random number in the 3000s, and not always lower than last time. Why is this do you know?
Genuinely I just found an invite code from Google. Once you’re in the app is pretty much as advertised.
If you’re technically savvy, it looks like you could self-host the application. https://github.com/beeper/self-host
This is what I did, took a bit to get it configured but works great once your up and running.
How long have you been running it so far? Any issues?
A few months for the Facebook and Instagram bridges and I just setup the Google messages Bridge last week.
I’ll take a look, cheers. Got an Raspberry Pi lying about somewhere I could use
I was in the wait list for only 20 days, according to the email when I got in. No idea why I got in so fast but others have been waiting months.
I signed up when it was first announced over a year ago. As of a couple months ago I still hadn’t gotten approved. I signed up again and within a couple days I got approved. You should try signing up again.
I’ve never heard of beeper, but it sounds pretty inaccessible from what your saying. Is there something that makes it worth it? Or is it just another messaging app that nobody I need to speak with is using?
looks to be the opposite. it seems to take existing msg apps and bring them all under one app interface. whatsapp, Facebook msg, SMS, telegram. etc
Just signed up myself, about 40k in line it seems. Sounds like reinventing Trillian/Gaim/Pidgin/etc…
It’s a modern take on the Pidgin concept. Pidgin ran locally on one computer and didn’t sync anything between any of your other Pidgin installs. Also, your login details for every account were usually in plaintext on disk. In practice, it feels
Beeper (really Matrix + bridges) is a network service that you can access with a browser, mobile app, whatever.
Yep, didn’t mean it to sound like I was putting it down. Sounds like a cool concept.
I believe Beeper is Matrix under the hood. They have just made it more accessible with a new interface and pre-installed bridges.
Use slimsocial to reply to those contacts that still insist to use that messaging app and tell them that you aren’t reachable over there anymore, ghost any subsequent message
Interesting, I didn’t know about this
Well, at least the full app has the opt-in E2EE chats.
I swear my battery life improved after I uninstalled messenger for a while and got worse after reinstalling recently.
I wouldn’t have installed it except I was in the process of getting back in touch with a few old friends. Was totally worth it for that.
I’m on the same page. I would prefer not having those apps installed or even an account, but my friends are more worth to me than my IT ideals.
It’s too bad that your friendship isn’t more important than ten minutes of inconvenience for them to install a different app or to give you their actual phone number.
It’s exactly what social media platforms, particularly Facebook, want. They want you to feel locked in because your friends are there
I don’t know why people don’t just use more SMS. You don’t need all the fancy bells and whistles, it shouldn’t change the conversation you’re having, especially with the gradual rollout of rich messages, and it has a wider audience than Facebook will ever have. More people have SMS than have Facebook
We found the american, no one outside of USA still uses SMS.
And we definitely do not want the “rich messages”Telegram, Signal and WhatsApp are fine, as for privacy how exactly are SMS better?
Not even iPhone users use SMS lol, they use an app!
I’m not on board with sms being a better service in general, but it’s kind of difficult to argue that other messaging services are superior when sms is the only one designed to be accessible without internet access.
Everyone outside of the U.S. almost assuredly still has SMS capabilities, it’s just not common utilized because everyone is already on WhatsApp or Telegram. It’s where their friends are, locking them into the ecosystem, which is exactly what I just said. And I would be willing to wager the only reason WhatsApp really got huge was because SMS hasn’t always been free to use and may still not be free in some countries and with some plans.
Telegram, Signal and WhatsApp are fine, as for privacy how exactly are SMS better?
I wasn’t speaking to privacy specifically, but where all your friends are.
If you want privacy, then you shouldn’t be using Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp anyway, considering both are owned by Meta and their privacy track record is shaky at best.
Signal is a great choice, but we get back to the main point where not everyone is on Signal, and once you are on Signal you’re locked in to using Signal and must have their app to participate in the conversation.
My point wasn’t that SMS is better, but it’s simpler and more widely available and doesn’t require a standalone application to use.
Ideally we would use an open standard like the Matrix standard to communicate, that way you can download whatever application you want and have all the privacy you could ever desire, but not have to download some random messaging application just to catch up from Gary from primary school
I wish matrix would catch on too. Basically every non US app is still tied to a damn phone number for auth, so it’s not better than sms for mobility anyway.
I find that you’re making a lot of assumptions on my friendships based on my 4 lines comment.
I do chat with my friends via SMS or phone cause I indeed have their number. But you can’t deny that SMS for group chats is pretty gruesome.
Based on that, everybody is used to those popular chat apps and have their other group chats on them. Why would I make them change when they work for what’s intended? Privacy is the best argument, but they may not all care enough to not find it bothering. So I don’t bother ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Live and let live
They dont work for what’s intended. Its an illusion to pull money from your content and your potential ad revenue.
Thats not getting into any of the other sociological effects of a huge amount of people getting their daily news from Facebook message headlines.
I’ve found the same thing with the IG and FB apps which is why I don’t use them. I stick to the mobile web versions but they have made it difficult to message from the android mobile web without extra steps like desktop mode. Even then there can be missing functionality.
There was also an article earlier this year where they were purposely “testing” the apps that forcibly drained some user batteries quickly without a care for the actual users affected. Since I’m often using my phone for navigation in the woods I want as much battery life as possible please.
Anyways if it wasn’t for older friends and family members I would no longer be using FB.
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Certainly a argument can be made for this. For me it is the extended family and contacts from hobbies /sports. Without FB they would have completely faded out of my life. This low level method maintains a loose family connections once maintained by the senior family members that have long since passed. As for the others yes completely disappear from your life…
Of course it did. They’re tracking everything you do, and everywhere you go, even when the app isn’t running. Don’t believe me? Install the Duck Duck Go browser and enable App Tracking Protection. You will be shocked by the amount of shit so many apps track in the background, but Facebook is one of the worst.
You can use Facebook Lite instead of the main Messenger app if you want to. It’s got messaging integrated into it.
For now…
I doubt Facebook Lite is going anywhere - it’s needed in poorer regions where very old phones are used. Lite renders a lot of its UI on a server (similar to how Opera Mini works) which is how it’s so lightweight.
At least use messenger with vanced patches to get rid of all the ads in conversation view.
Something like Island/Insular/Shelter might help. I just discovered these apps recently and am currently testing Shelter. It seems to work.
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The mobile site is unusable, and if you switch it to desktop it’s very hard to use on a touchscreen.
If anyone has alternatives, I’d appreciate it!
I’ve tried, and on the mobile site there’s no way to access Messenger. Only workaround is if you force the desktop version on messenger.com but it is very inconvenient.
Supposedly you will be able to use FB Lite app to chat. I got the same message, uninstalled Messenger Lite and verified that FB Lite app works for chatting.
