Meta discontinues Messenger Lite for Android, it will be unavailable after Sep 18. Users need to install regular Messenger app instead

Technology@beehaw.org – 496 points – 11 months ago

I have not found any news article on this on a whim. Because my friends and family, I need to use Facebook Messenger, and Messenger Lite was a OK client - lightweight, no unnecessary features, etc., compared to the regular Messenger app.

Now I'm a little torn, having a Meta app on my phone is already bad, but having to downgrade to the bloated Messenger app? Not sure I will make a change. What are your thoughts?

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It sounds like a too good to be true situation. Definitely an interesting concept though. Sounds like they use remote servers to connect to the third-party apps using your credentials and then transcribe the messages using the Matrix protocol to the app. Source here and snippet below

Beeper consists of two main components:

A client app that runs on your devices.

A web service run by Beeper.

... Beeper’s web service consists of a Matrix homeserver and infrastructure to run open source bridges that connect to 15 different chat networks.

Currently free but also will be a Plus version eventually rolling out, according to the FAQ

For now, everyone has access to all the features of Beeper Plus for free. At some point in 2023, we will begin charging $5-10 per month for Beeper Plus.

Also, no humor is lost on the fact that it is dangerously close to Wuph from The Office...

I signed up for beeper, but realized you can self host a matrix server that uses the same bridges between these chat services.

I was skeptical at first, but it's been super solid and refreshing to have a single chat app for everything.

How did you do that? I'd love to set something like that up. I keep seeing Matrix mentioned everywhere, but I haven't looked into it to see exactly what it is.

@Unsustainable @bananahammock @technology Matrix is a protocol for real time communication. Several companies build products using this protocol, including Elemental, Beeper and Rocket Chat.

This is similar to how ActivityPub is a protocol for federated social media. Many projects are built using ActivityPub, including Mastodon, PixelFed, and Lemmy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrix\_(protocol)

@Unsustainable @bananahammock @technology

A “Matrix Bridge” is a computer program that connects to an arbitrary service and presents it as Matrix service. You can connect to that Matrix service with any Matrix client.

For example, this code connects LinkedIn messages to Matrix: https://github.com/beeper/linkedin

Beeper runs Matrix bridges for you as a service. If you don’t want to use that service, you can self-host the bridges.