Earlier this year on April 9th, Facebook announced it would be moving its messages completely out of the app and into the standalone messenger app, thus forcing users to download the app in order to send and receive messages.
Over this past weekend, the changes began to ramp up speed when messages started disappearing from the Facebook app, making the only way to access your messages on mobile be through the Messenger app.
Today, Mashable published an article about the newest development in the Facebook Messenger app discussion: being able to retain your messages on the Facebook app without having to download the separate Messenger app. Turns out, if you simply start the download of the Messenger app but stop it before it’s installed, your messages will show up back in the main Facebook app.
While I have been an avid user of the Facebook Messenger app for as long as I have had an iPhone, I can understand the qualms users have over downloading the Messenger app, as well as the desire to keep everything into one app. Privacy issues remain rampant, and although this Huffington Post article lays out most of the questions and answers, users still have their doubts regarding security, especially now that they are being forced to download the separate app. While it doesn’t seem like there is any other choice at this point other than to download the Messenger app, this loophole is probably the last resort. Personally, I could see this new change coming, as Facebook’s claims over the past few years about the quality of the app versus in-app messaging (it is indeed faster) seemed to somewhat allude to this change. All in all, Facebook’s control over our lives does seem at times a bit forceful, but I don’t see any need to panic over privacy or security because of this requirement. Yet.
