LightSpeed: Rewriting Messenger’s codebase for a faster, smaller, simpler app

Re:LightSpeed: Rewriting Messenger’s codebase for a faster, ... by Doctor_Fegg on Monday March 02, 2020 @02:35PM (#22467964)

Here's a way in which they can save 100% of the size: Stop stubbornly barring mobile clients from using the web interface. This is why I don't use Facebook Messenger at all.

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Re:LightSpeed: Rewriting Messenger’s codebase for a faster, ... by monocasa on Monday March 02, 2020 @02:40PM (#22468038)

But then they don't have permissions to slurp up all of your contacts, watch all of your SMS, and listen to your microphone...

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Re:LightSpeed: Rewriting Messenger’s codebase for a faster, ... by MikusR on Monday March 02, 2020 @03:04PM (#22468323)

Wait! Somebody found evidence of them listening to your microphone?

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Re:LightSpeed: Rewriting Messenger’s codebase for a faster, ... by lord_braleigh on Monday March 02, 2020 @05:11PM (#22469583)

Still no. If an iOS app is using your microphone while backgrounded, your phone's taskbar at the top of the screen will be red. iOS does not allow apps to use the microphone while the screen is off. The microphone thing is a myth fueled by paranoia and confirmation bias. FB already has plenty of data on you and doesn't need to run NLP on everything you say in order to show you relevant ads.

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Re:LightSpeed: Rewriting Messenger’s codebase for a faster, ... by monocasa on Monday March 02, 2020 @05:23PM (#22469689)

> iOS does not allow apps to use the microphone while the screen is off.

Isn't the screen off in nearly all of the legitimate uses of a microphone, ie. "I'm replicating the ux of a phone call in my chat app"?

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Re:LightSpeed: Rewriting Messenger’s codebase for a faster, ... by pbhjpbhj on Monday March 02, 2020 @03:26PM (#22468535)

Well I have messenger lite on Android and they, as the parent says, "ask permission to listen to your microphone". Presumably they do voice chat, which needs that permission, surely.

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Re:LightSpeed: Rewriting Messenger’s codebase for a faster, ... by Scapeghost on Monday March 02, 2020 @02:44PM (#22468099)

I really wish iOS would allow you to select which contacts/photo album to give an app access to, instead of all hundreds/thousands of them.

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Re:LightSpeed: Rewriting Messenger’s codebase for a faster, ... by amarshall on Monday March 02, 2020 @02:53PM (#22468212)

For photos, I wish iOS would not require a permission at all in the case where I just want it to open an OS-controlled file picker and then give the app the one photo, akin to copy-pasting it. No reason to give access to every photo when only N are picked.

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Re:LightSpeed: Rewriting Messenger’s codebase for a faster, ... by kitsunesoba on Monday March 02, 2020 @03:40PM (#22468696)

It’s been a while since I worked with the photo library APIs in iOS, but as I recall there in fact is an API that apps can use to request the user to pick individual photos from an OS picker without further permissions. Most apps just don’t use it because they all want to do their own custom photo picker UIs (even privacy focused apps fall victim to this).

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Re:LightSpeed: Rewriting Messenger’s codebase for a faster, ... by monocularvision on Monday March 02, 2020 @09:39PM (#22471329)

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/uikit/uiimagepicke...

iOS 2.0+

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Re:LightSpeed: Rewriting Messenger’s codebase for a faster, ... by alpaca128 on Monday March 02, 2020 @02:52PM (#22468196)

I wish Android/iOS would let the user decide individually on every single file/contact/etc access, at least in an optional setting.

Would be interesting to see how many seemingly harmless apps start to break, I would expect similar results to surfing the web with a JS blocker.

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Re:LightSpeed: Rewriting Messenger’s codebase for a faster, ... by DelightOne on Monday March 02, 2020 @02:47PM (#22468144)

Maybe group-based, and some apps only get the selected.

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Re:LightSpeed: Rewriting Messenger’s codebase for a faster, ... by ajscanlan on Tuesday March 03, 2020 @08:59AM (#22474440)

The apps don't have permission to do that either unless you grant them.

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Re:LightSpeed: Rewriting Messenger’s codebase for a faster, ... by thepangolino on Monday March 02, 2020 @02:45PM (#22468102)

For some reason I can access the chat using Firefox Mobile on iOS but not through Safari.

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Re:LightSpeed: Rewriting Messenger’s codebase for a faster, ... by kreetx on Monday March 02, 2020 @04:00PM (#22468925)

I used mbasic.facebook.com for a while when it was not possible to use it from the regular mobile web. But for like a year or something they appear to have turned the web back on (at least for firefox, haven't tested anything else).

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Re:LightSpeed: Rewriting Messenger’s codebase for a faster, ... by skizm on Monday March 02, 2020 @02:39PM (#22468030)

mbasic.facebook.com

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Re:LightSpeed: Rewriting Messenger’s codebase for a faster, ... by wilkystyle on Monday March 02, 2020 @02:37PM (#22468001)

If I request the desktop site, I am able to access Messenger (iOS, Safari)

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Re:LightSpeed: Rewriting Messenger’s codebase for a faster, ... by joking on Monday March 02, 2020 @02:55PM (#22468241)

That’s a workaround for a on purpose decision to cripple the mobile website, where the chat and messages worked flawlessly. Another decision against users was to use messages as notification in some cases.

I didn’t pull the trigger on canceling the account as from time to time I find news and event from pages that I follow, but there’s no way I’m installing an app that uses so many shady tactics.

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Re:LightSpeed: Rewriting Messenger’s codebase for a faster, ... by monocasa on Monday March 02, 2020 @02:39PM (#22468031)

Yeah, I do that in firefox mobile as well.

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