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Facebook Lobbying for Option to Make Messenger Default on iOS
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For what? For 2FA and order confirmations, I sometimes see it. For friends talking to each other, it’s become very rare.
Pretty please with sugar on top let’s maintain autonomy. Steve would never have approved this gibberish?
Facebook is now actively seeking an option to make its Messenger app the default app for messages on iPhones, reports The Information.
Emboldened by changes in iOS 14 that allow users to set a default email and browser app of their choice, Facebook believes it now has a more persuasive case to argue for a similar change for messaging apps. Last year, Apple also allowed Siri to send messages through other apps.
Chudnovksy revealed that Facebook has repeatedly asked Apple to consider adding an option for users to select a messaging app of their choice.
When asked why Apple is unwilling to cede the ability to set a different default messaging app, Chudnovsky said his "main guess is that messaging drives hardware sales."
If Apple did consider such a change, it would require additional changes to allow SMS texts to be received via third-party apps, which is not currently possible on iOS, and more invasive alterations for setting up third-party apps with SMS verification codes. The move would require more substantial and invasive changes to the way iOS functions than the ability to change default browser, for example.
Facebook is intending to merge Instagram and Messenger chats, and the platform is increasingly central to Facebook's business.
Facebook appears to be joining other companies such as Epic Games in a willingness to risk provoking Apple for the chance of potential reward. Yesterday, a range of companies, including Epic Games, Spotify, and Tile, have formed a new organization called the "Coalition for App Fairness," in an effort to highlight developer issues with Apple.
Facebook has recently heavily criticized Apple for restrictions on gaming apps, ad targeting, and in-app purchases. Last month, Facebook warned advertisers that Apple's upcoming anti-tracking tools could cause a more than 50 percent drop in Audience Network publisher revenue due to the removal of personalization from ads within apps. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has also referred to Apple's App Store as monopolistic and harmful to customers. Apple "blocks innovation, blocks competition," and uses the App Store to "charge monopoly rents," he said.
This new development represents yet another front upon which Apple is facing pressure regarding antitrust and monopoly issues.
Article Link: Facebook Lobbying for Option to Make Messenger Default on iOS
If it was up to me I would allow third party messaging apps but only on a case by case basis if they adhered to Apple's strict privacy guidelines, which would rule out anything facebook makes or will make. This would be a good argument in any potential court case.
But they already are allowed. They even integrate with the Share sheet.
Messenger has 1.3 billion active users. They also own WhatsApp with 2 billion active users and the two services have been slowly merging into one ever since Facebook Purchased WhatsApp.
It’s not rare - SMS is by far the most used messaging service with over 4 billion active users. Which is more than double the largest alternative (WhatsApp).
SMS is dying in countries where carriers charge excessive fees, but in regions where pricing is reasonable (often free) it’s still used heavily. Because everyone can receive an SMS. No other messaging platform has that feature except for email.
If “active user” means “someone with a cellphone”, maybe. If it’s “someone who sends at least one message a day”, I doubt it.
SMS has been basically free for a long time here; you get ungodly amounts of “free” messages included in the plan.
It’s just not great compared to modern messengers.
I just wish the world moved from Instagram to Twitter and from Whatsapp to Telegram. I don't use Facebook since 2015 but I sadly use Whatsapp for work and IM and Instagram for entertainment.
You are still caught in the spider’s web. WhatsApp is just as bad as is IG. I hope one day you can free yourself before you get eaten.
I hate some people think Facebook is the web. Google is the web actually.
They offer to make it cross platform when the introduced it but there were crickets because it included privacy by being encrypted so they weren’t interested because they couldn’t steal data.
That doesn’t make any sense. That is like saying if it wasn’t for GSM voice calls you could do away with the phone app
You realise you have a mobile phone do you?
That is a very interesting analogy actually, thanks for making it. See, I can choose not to use FaceTime, and Phone is a bare bones app to manage GSM calls, contacts and voicemail, that's been virtually unchanged since the first iOS. I would very much prefer the same treatment for a lean SMS client, and let me choose my own default messenger service. I really do not care one bit about iMessage's bells and whistles, effects, animemoji or whatnot, and next to that, nobody I know actually uses it either.
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I genuinely believe Zuckerberg and his company deliberately want to harm the public, especially the young.
Consider this evidence. They want to merge all their services into one messaging app - FB, WhatsApp, Instagram.
Make your Instagram profile private. Even with your profile set to private, fake accounts and trolls can still add you to perverted groups and still message you. Almost every day I receive messages from fake accounts who send me flirting messages with links to sites that potentially host malware or worse.
If their messaging app was set to default on iOS or Android this kind of malicious behavior would be more widespread. Facebook is doing nothing to prevent this and appears to revel in it.
Here’s a couple of screenshots. I have dozens of screenshots of these malicious accounts sending dangerous links.
Consider this evidence. They want to merge all their services into one messaging app - FB, WhatsApp, Instagram.
Make your Instagram profile private. Even with your profile set to private, fake accounts and trolls can still add you to perverted groups and still message you. Almost every day I receive messages from fake accounts who send me flirting messages with links to sites that potentially host malware or worse.
If their messaging app was set to default on iOS or Android this kind of malicious behavior would be more widespread. Facebook is doing nothing to prevent this and appears to revel in it.
Here’s a couple of screenshots. I have dozens of screenshots of these malicious accounts sending dangerous links.
Attachments
I really don't think Facebook supports trolls, scammers, etc. It hurts their business model more than it helps.
Twitter is no good either. This is another company that practises social engineering, miscalculates the consequences of their editorialism, censors or manipulates trending topics, encourages public personalities and journalists to be more extreme and disingenuous, and like tobacco it makes people so addicted to ‘likes’ that they will say the most hyperbolic things for their next serotonin high.
These platforms are ripping us apart and killing us like tobacco did, but instead of lung cancer we get cancer of the mind. They just say ‘It’s your fault’, but their whole business model is based on creating addiction. Hate is profit, hysteria is profit, division is profit.
I agree with you.
Apple is talking to us about privacy - but how are they protecting their existing customers?
If my friend has an Android phone and I need to send him a message, I need to install an application (typically Whatsapp) on my phone to talk to them.
Why doesn't Apple make iMessage available for Android - all the other messaging apps (or at least the majority) would be obsolete.
So, what does Apple tell us? Force your friends to switch to iPhone - which again is a stance to just increase their own sales - they don't really care about their existing customer's privacy.
Have you seen what the young are actually doing to themselves on Tik Tok and Snapchat? I think Zuck is kinda old news for them already. If anything it's us voting millennials he's harming with his resolve to not take down propaganda bots, abuse, trackers and manufactured puff pieces that pass for news.
That is true, but at the same time you don't see that much of a crackdown either. Perhaps they operate under the old adage "the more the merrier" when it comes to plain eyeball/ click traffic.
I report these accounts every time. I get replies back from FB/IG saying there’s no problem and these accounts continue to exist and continue to spam people, even with accounts set to private.
I have friends whose accounts have been cloned and their identities duplicated. After reporting them, same reply. FB/IG says there’s no problem with identity theft.
On Twitter someone highlighted an IG account that was quite clearly trafficking minors. Everyone went to report that account and everyone got the same response from IG - they didn’t see the problem.
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I don't think that's a bad thing. (And sooner or later, there will be antitrust pressure.)
I still haven't seen anyone explain what it even means to have a default messenger on iOS, though. I don't see iMessage getting much preferential treatment in iOS.