Meta is removing its Messenger apps for Windows and macOS

What? It feels like a web wrapper right now, I always thought it was an old backend because the web app had better functionality.

Tangentially related but I have to harp on about it because almost nobody is saying it. Microsoft —and specifically xbox — Had it’s most profitable yearS ever and people (journalists) still try to rationalize every time they raise prices and lay off thousands and thousands of workers

The AI stuff might genuinely factor into it, I largely don’t use it myself but from what I understand from some colleagues it’s churning out decent react and co, while other languages can have mixed results.

yup. i have a bunch of users that won't be happy. they only still have fb for messenger, use the messenger app, and never go to fb itself anymore.

for thier fake AI users to train.

I just flat out quit messenger when they made it app-only. I'm not installing that shit in my phone or my computer. Facebook on my phone is just the web app.

Best part is no little red digits telling me I'm missing out on something (spam and shit I don't care about 95% of the time). I check it when I think to. That's once every few months which is about how often I'm interested in updates from people who aren't in my life any more.

I'd like to replace all of my apps with bookmarks eventually. No one needs that kind of data on me.

You can still use the website. This is just talking about the native apps.

1. They’re losing money on those teams and simplifying their stack will allow them to reduce costs.

I don't have any knowledge about this in particular, but as someone with experience working at big tech companies, you're missing the most likely reason:

1. Everyone who worked on it was reorged to higher priority teams, and nobody is left to maintain the apps

A lot of teams are only 3-6 developers, an engineering manager, a project manager, and a designer. Other roles like content design and QA are often shared across lots of teams. Developers with experience building native apps might be needed on other projects.

Mostly, people with friends.

WhatsApp and Messenger are the #1 and #3 most used messaging apps in the world. (#2 is WeChat)

In Australia where I'm from, Messenger is the most popular by far.

Students, especially in the Philippines and some 3rd world countries. You can basically use Messenger and Facebook without data, just without images or video. For the sake of accessibility schools tend to use these services.

i only ever use facebook not logged into to download maps for a old game, and i use ublock origin to remove the annoying login screen.

Ugh, the only thing I hate more than a few people I regularly talk with still using Messenger is having to deal with the desktop client. Now this 🙄

Doesn't this mean that you should be happy with this then? Since you hate the desktop client?

I can't even get push notifications working.

Which browser? Safari is notorious for having a lot of bugs around push notifications, but Chrome and Firefox should both work.

I'm confused. Are you upset the app is being removed? As in you don't like webapps, you want them as apps?

And they harm platform consistency, etc.

Unfortunately, a lot of major apps aren't consistent any more. Each app uses its own design language and its own UI widgets, rather than using proper native ones. Often they're no better than web apps. I hate it and would rather just use a web app instead.

Teams!

/j /j /j