With risk of coming off like that guy... This is why I would prefer bitcoin for something like this. I don't want to give someone my credit card and trust that they will only charge what I ask them. And I think in the long run, more people would use these kinds of services if they didn't have to do that.

How is the app overly intrusive?

I doubt average the average facebook user feels that way

While some of the more sensationalist parts of this were debunked, here [1] is the article that goes over a critical (non-technical) analysis of the binary itself.

The app uses some private Apple APIs, including capturing the SSID of your wireless network.

[1] http://motherboard.vice.com/en_uk/read/facebooks-messenger-a...

I thought Apple automatically scanned and rejected apps for private API usage

They do. You can get around this with a little trickery, since they just scan for calls to specific method signatures.

I find it surprising that Apple puts up with blatant and conscious violations of their rules from such a high profile app.

Most likely FB will have an exception agreement with Apple. With their amounts of cash they can easily buy anything...

You missed the outrage when Facebook forced users to switch to Messager: http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2014/08/08/facebook-messenger-pr...

Given how important Facebook is to so many people (plus just the sheer size of its userbase) I literally do not think it is possible for them to make any changes whatsoever that do not provoke some sort of backlash. If they merged Messenger back into the main app there would certainly be an uproar over that as well.

That's not entirely true - they forced me to uninstall the app and just use the website on my mobile browser.

Depressingly I am pretty sure it's a better UX than the app was - just without notifications.