Facebook Messenger Sparks Anger in Low-End Smartphone Users

Facebook’s aim is to be a social network, dedicated to maintaining friendships, creating new ones, share experiences and most importantly, chatting with friends. However, the social networks appears to do exactly the opposite and spark a large number of enemies who hate its current strategy.

The social network giant appears to have made another attempt at ‘forcing’ users to install its Facebook Messenger, the standalone app that you now need to chat with your friends. Previously, the Facebook mobile app incorporated all its features, including the chat feature.

The new app however rips the chat feature and users are required to have both the Facebook and Facebook Messenger app installed in order to enjoy the full experience on their mobile devices.

By separating the two, Facebook apparently made quite a lot of its users frustrated of having to depend on two apps instead of just one. Older smartphone users are especially infuriated by the social network’s decision due to the fact that they simply do not have the processing power of using them both simultaneously. A user commenting on this strategy shares her (paranoid) way around it all:

“If you root your phone so that Facebook is not in the bloatware, then don’t download either one. I use it straight from the website browser and delete my cache, history, data when I log out. The heavy battery use of the apps following me around like big brother and the slowdown of my phone was enough to justify this option.” she said.

Another user seems to skip using the Facebook app altogether, refusing to install it due to its ‘intrusive’ permissions required just to get the app on the smartphone:

“I guess I’ll be taking numbers and sending more text messages. I’m not downloading Messenger and I sure as hell refuse to upgrade Facebook. Haven’t upgraded the app since October. The permissions required are beyond intrusive and are absolutely unnecessary.”

Others are just moving to other means of communications and simpler apps that provide these features, stating that developers are just releasing apps based on their usage preference and not the actual consumer:

“Sometimes it seems that the people creating these apps assume that everyone uses them in the way they do; that everyone has the latest devices with lots of storage space. With FourSquare/Swarm I honestly can’t see the point for me; I don’t give a toss where people are right now, because I’m not a 20-something valley geek who hangs out at just a few places with all my mates, which seems to be the point of the new app.”

All users’ frustrations seem to make sense, since the Facebook app itself uses around 150 MB storage space. Installing another one for the same service is simply too much for some users owning lower-end smartphones and even the features do not justify the space it requires in order to get the full Facebook experience on your smartphone.

Thank you TechRadar for providing us with this information