Why not use Messenger without Facebook?

My reason not to use Facebook was because it trivializes friendships. With Facebook, I wouldn't have to go out of my way to be "friends" with someone, so the relationship would be less meaningful. But Messenger doesn't share that property --- you have to bother to click on someone's name and you have to bother to think up a good message to send them. That means it's no worse than any other IM client, with the strong advantage that your real-world friends already use it. You get to keep up with them in the way you want to, and they get to keep up with you in the way they want to.

Best of both worlds?

1. The mandatory "seen" indicator

2. All of your messages are beholden to a private company, permanently stored in plaintext

3. They analyze said messages to deliver advertisements. Seriously, one time I mentioned buying a Samsung SSD to my friend in chat, and all of a sudden I got a ton of SSD advertisements on the sidebar. Same thing when I mentioned Rick and Morty.

4. It's Facebook, for crying out loud.

While the seen indicator is a legitimate annoyance, it's been commonplace for some years now. I don't know of a modern chat app that doesn't have it.

As for the rest of your points, Facebook's money comes from ads. These concerns are not limited to chat, but using Facebook in general. As you browse the web, Facebook is tracking you and using the data to deliver more relevant ads. As you comment and make posts, Facebook uses the data to deliver more relevant ads.

Every part of the service is designed to help them do this, saying that these are reasons to "not use Messenger" is missing the point. The point of using Messenger is that you're not tied to any other portion of Facebook. You just get to message friends, plain and simple. The benefit is you're not being enticed into scrolling your news feed, spammed with notifications about upcoming events etc.

Plus, there are rumours they're going to bring e2e encryption in a la Whatsapp, which would pretty much squash points 2 and 3.

Also, as an alternative, Hangouts stores my chat history in gmail (opt in), so unlike Messenger/Line/Whatsapp I have a history of all my chats on Hangouts which I actually find very useful.

That said, 99% of my friends and family are on FB Messenger

"Instant Messaging" indeed!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk_(software)

Spec: https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0301.html Demos: http://www.realjabber.org/

Not that Google (or whoever) are going to implement it now...

This is why Facebook is best used in an incognito-mode browser window.

I use multiple tabs with FB whenever I do have to use it, and private/incognito mode wouldn't work well for that scenario because it would force me to login in every tab. So instead I use normal mode with extensions to block ads, tracking cookies, social features on websites and Facebook Redirection (where clicks are handled by FB to track which site is being visited). This is with a combination of uBlock Origin, Privacy Badger and a few others. That way, I get to have multiple FB tabs but don't see my profile in the comments section on another site to allow further tracking. Any link I visit from FB isn't exposed to FB either.

I don't use those either. I stick to texting and iMessage.

> The point of using Messenger is that you're not tied to any other portion of Facebook.

You're tied to their ad platform. Whether you view those ads or not are up to you; but you are nonetheless tied to it. They analyze your private conversations with the eventual hope to manipulate you.

>3. They analyze said messages to deliver advertisements. Seriously, one time I mentioned buying a Samsung SSD to my friend in chat, and all of a sudden I got a ton of SSD advertisements on the sidebar. Same thing when I mentioned Rick and Morty.

These are poor complaints, unless your circle of friends is so insular on the the (justifiably) paranoid side of tech that everyone is running their own mail servers and using GPG day to day.

Are your friends all Tor developers or something? I just can't imagine a set of family/friends/acquaintances who actually run their own Postfix and care what a public key is.

I'll accept the existence of an advertising profile (I don't see the ads, anyway) before I'lll cease all communication with everyone in my network, which is what it would take to avoid Facebook (or the exact same problem with a different company).

iMessage is nice, but many of the people I converse with regularly aren't in the Apple ecosystem.

I'd rather give my conversations to a company that sees storing/processing messages as a liability, rather than an asset.

To answer that question, I opted to list personal reasons why I don't use it; reasons I'm sure are shared by many. Your response is basically telling me my experience and opinions are wrong.

...Especially when you're trying to convince someone who saw it with their own two eyes.

I don't use Facebook enough to care; uBlock Origin suits my needs just fine.

For point 3, Facebook could still be analyzing the contents of messages.

Soon you may not have to! https://googleblog.blogspot.sg/2016/05/allo-duo-apps-messagi...

While I kinda get removing it from the mobile app, I don't really know what the rationale is for getting rid of mobile web chat though. It's not like it's disappearing from the desktop web app anytime soon, right?

right?

Personally I'm not convinced that "Westerners" are going to get on board with Chinese-style all-in-one chat apps. I'm doubly unconvinced that Facebook will pull it off.

That said, we should probably consider all of these platforms harmful. I've migrated (and been pressuring my connections to migrate) to Telegram.org

Interesting. I have been much happier since killing the Fb app'a notification and badge permissions.

I'm guessing that within the next one year or so, Facebook will force people to move to official apps even on desktop systems (like Windows and OS X), closing browser based access completely. That would give Facebook more control on tracking, ads, etc.

[1] https://consumerist.com/2012/01/04/how-facebooks-message-spa...

[2] http://www.askdavetaylor.com/how-to-check-facebook-spam-emai...

[3] http://www.cosmopolitan.co.uk/entertainment/news/a42460/anot...

[4] http://uk.businessinsider.com/facebook-filtered-message-requ...

There's a cost to using the free Messenger service [1]. They also want to make it into WeChat.

Fortunately, vendor lock-in breeds resentment and dissidents. Hopefully, a better alternative will come from this.

Oh cool, they brought over the thing that made me completely stop using Facebook!

If that weren't true, I wouldn't use Messenger, and if that's not true for you, I can understand not using it.

I don't really understand, however, why folks like you try to make this a morality issue.

> FB's decision just pushed me and all other similar users (users that already are on the fringes of FB usage, using it only rarely) even further away.