The events is an interesting one, there aren't many alternatives if you're setting up a private event and IIRC the facebook event experience was good.

I also think "there's nothing wrong with messenger", I don't finds its experience loathsome like Facebook. That said, I also don't "love" it any more than Signal, Whatsapp, iMessage etc. It'll be really interesting to see how the unification of messaging works out - they could "Facebookify " it, I wonder how people will respond if there's a stronger focus on ads.