Why It’s Time to Ditch Facebook Messenger

I recently went on a trip to Taiwan, whereupon I added some business contacts to my Facebook. It locked me out of the service and as I’m not on my usual phone number, I could not get back in. I found out this extended to my Instagram and Facebook Messenger. Not cool Facebook.

Facebook Messenger is not Something I will Miss in 2018

You take my data and profit from it with third party harvesting and Ads, but when I need it most, I can’t even log-in. This leads me to wonder though, do I really even need Facebook Messenger?

You should stop using Facebook Messenger until it proves it’s worthy of your trust.

I certainly don’t trust Facebook’s trinity of apps: Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. They don’t protect my data or privacy and certainly don’t offer me the convenience they should have developed by 2018, witness WeChat being ubiquitous in China for payments, access to services and even E-commerce via mini-programs. Now WeChat will even be voice-enabled with Tencent’s new smart speaker.

Facebook is No Longer a Leader in Convenience

Facebook can make $40 Bn. of Ad revenue, but it’s still a failure in my mind.

Facebook Messenger is supposedly the go-to way we sent messages to friends all over the world, with 1.2 Billion users.

The truth is, it’s probably not a secure channel. We’ve flocking to Signal and Telegram for a reason.

When I think about the #DeleteFacebook trending movement on Twitter, in my mind I’m including Facebook flagship app (especially), Facebook Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp, and the recently acquired tbh (to be honest). This is because I no longer trust or respect what Facebook did with all of its power, traffic and influence.

Facebook Messenger Alternatives Look a Lot Brighter Recently

In the wake of the poor ethics involved in Facebook’s core functioning, business model and sorry to say, it’s leadership — it’s not hard to look at the greener fields of more targeted competitors to Facebook Messenger.

For example I trust Apple more, so why not use Apple’s iMessage. Why not adopt Google Hangout for my younger friends in Tech. I much prefer WeChat for voice-messaging.

I like Slack for work related projects. But it’s time to really think differently about how we communicate, from Snapchat to Telegram and Signal, there are better alternatives for SMS than Facebook Messenger.

When Facebook thought I want to see Ads in Facebook Messenger, I almost stopped using it.

Stories on Facebook? A complete turn-off for me. In truth, as attention grabbing as stories are on Instagram, they have taken away from what the app used to be. The quick exposition of “experiences” in Stories, have taken away from the visual storytelling of the core-app. Effectively only to hack our attention, but not actually consume the best content Instagram has to offer.

The Monetization of Users

• Facebook is not a company you can Trust
• Facebook Messenger sets its own rules and is not customer-centric.
• Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp now must become just monetization plays of user-activity.

The term “captive audience” mean anything to you? We use services just because “everyone else is using it”, but there comes a point when that’s no longer a good enough reason to do so, I’ve reached that point.

Facebook as a Failure of Data Whoring

Messenger is not collecting data that’s useful to me. As far as I’m concerned, Google maps and Google Chrome can collect all the info on me they want, because I know it will translate to useful convenience for me, and not just Ad-revenue for them. Same goes for Alexa, Amazon’s personal assistant, hey I’d even turn on a feature for it to actively listen to me 24/7. Really, I would! But Facebook, they just seem sneaky, and sort of dumb. They haven’t built an ecosystem system of value that will keep me around.

Facebook on my android device, probably takes meta-data of all of my texts, friends and even phone calls. But wtf does it give me in return? Facebook’s mission is to:

Bring the world closer together.

• Your private messages aren’t really private.
• Facebook enables companies to track your movements online.
• Posts that won’t stick around forever are often better.

The Pervasive Failure of Privacy

I have always found Facebook very disappointing in terms of user control over our own data. What’s more, Facebook can’t even use my data in a way that’s useful to me, the product and the supposed end-user of its service. If that’s not a failure of a technology company, I honestly don’t know what is.

It doesn’t matter how many users you have bro (Facebook), if you can’t even get the utility of data right.

If only Facebook would have had the sense of copy WeChat, an app that can actually do things in the real world. I’d personally much rather be on a secure channel such as Signal or Telegram.

There are too many good competitors to Facebook Messenger, delete the app forever, turn it the hell off, don’t accept services that violate your trust, data, privacy and dignity.

Why It’s Time to Ditch Facebook Messenger was originally published in Hacker Noon on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.