Meta discontinues Messenger Lite for Android, it will be unavailable after Sep 18. Users need to install regular Messenger app instead
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?
Ever since Facebook forced the separate Messenger app, I've refused to install it. Instead, when I see a message notification, I pop into a browser, head to Facebook.com and push the desktop version. While it's clunky, I've never had to download Messenger.
Separate messaging app was the best thing they ever did. I've not had Facebook installed since.
Same. This will change nothing for me. I refuse their bullshit.
You're still using their shit, just in a very inconvenient way. In fact, you're going to their site that contains targeted ads rather than using an ad free app. What a strange hill to die on.
I have exactly one group that insists on communicating this way. Which is why this isn't a big inconvenience for me. Your point is well taken, but doesn't really apply in my case. I'm not a user of the service, which is why it's so easy for me to refuse to install it, and hopefully I can use this to pressure the group to move to discord or some other means of communication. But if not I will continue to use the desktop site rather than install an app.
I'm in the exact same position as you and take the same approach. It's a hill I'm getting a mildly stubbed toe on.
I'd rather have a slight inconvenience of seeing their ads on their website for the few moments I'd need to send a message than having their spyware of an app tracking everything I do all day long.
Not only is that not possible on both Android and iPhone nowadays, that's a myth that's never been remotely proven.
https://mbasic.facebook.com/ still works. It's missing some modern niceties, but usable. That's what I use for occasional messages.
In my head, i read this URL as https://YaBasic.facebook.com
I thought of a neck beard: โmโbasicโ
Why? I mean it's much better to have the messenger app without all the facebook BS.
Its very easy to disregard facebook in 2023, but Messenger is still one of the more prominent messaging app.
https://www.messenger.com/ also works (requires to be running as desktop version). Still not ideal but works.
I hate to say this, but Facebook Messenger is one of the most fully featured messaging apps. It has its own internal messaging standard that offers iMessage like features between Facebook users, and it also is one of the better SMS apps out there.
I can see why they make it its own app, it's supposed to replace other messaging apps.
Same here. I wish Disa messenger app was maintained as it was my one stop shop for a few messenger apps.
Is their messenger still a 150 MB monster that gets updated twice a day?
Yes, and they constantly change how parts of the UI work, most often getting more in the way of efficient actual messaging... It's really bad.
They cut the size down to 30 MB on iOS in 2019, but they're back to 110 since (on Android, it's 60 MB).
EDIT: In terms of updates, they are pretty stable at one update a week on both systems.
Android 13 here, Messenger is 148mb, last update 11 days ago
I think the Facebook Lite app includes messaging too.
No... I disabled the auto updates.
I wish someone discontinued Meta
Too bad Threads hasn't entered the Fediverse, things could've been easier.
I'll die before I install Facebook Messenger
Same. Just have to hold out until the EU makes all messaging apps cross+operable and then I'll be able to talk to everyone again.
Careful. They could be listening.
I hope they are.
Hey Facebook, eat a bag of dicks!
A whole bag of them!
Who tf uses messenger
Everyone in my family ๐
Texting still exists.
Being spied on by facebook, microsoft, and google is not worth the risk to me personally.
Again, who tf uses messenger?
The entire nation of Poland
You'd rather be spied on by your carrier.... Got it.
Better them than companies who advertise to me directly
I don't use either one, for very obvious reasons
Fair enough.
Personally, I don't like using 30 year old technology to communicate. I avoid phone calls and I generally avoid SMS and it's derivatives.
I work in IT and generally demand more from my messaging apps. I still avoid FB like the plague though.
Carrier canโt spy on you if iMessage and signal!
Which are both not SMS/texting. I know iMessage falls back to SMS if the number doesn't have iMessage, which is where the carrier spying comes in.
Instead for iMessage, it's Apple spying, and for signal it's...... Shrug
I trust iMesssgeโs e2e and Appleโs privacy a fuckovalot more than anything Facebook has ever made.
That's fine. I trust Google's chat app more than SMS, and others, it's all personal preference. The point of my comment was to demonstrate that no matter what you're using, someone has your data and is likely selling it.
If you trust apple enough to use their service, all the power to you. If you trust signal/telegram/element/whatever, that's cool too. But no matter what service you're using, if it's a free public service, your data is the product. It is, in all likelihood, being sold to someone somewhere.
It's a personal choice for how much risk you're willing to accept on that front. Bluntly, I don't think anyone should trust FB or any of suckerberg's properties. Everyone else is varying levels of shit. Some much worse than others.... The decisions made beyond that point are personal.
And frankly, if someone almost exclusively uses FB messenger, it says to me that they don't give any shits about their data or what happens to it. Everything else, meh. There's good and bad from most companies, some are doing better (signal, as an example, seems to be doing pretty good), others, not so great.... Meh.
In our country, texting (through the built-in Messenger app) is mostly done as an emergency measure, as most people here use Meta's other messaging app, WhatsApp.
They all have phone numbers you can text and they don't need to install another app or sign up for anything at least. But I understand when they prefer it and you have a fb account anyways.
Good luck sending photos or holding a video call with the scant 1100 bits provided by an SMS message...
RCS is our last hope...
AFAIK that unfortunately requires using Google Messages (or moving overseas)
I believe they've (Google) been somewhat successful in convincing carriers / 3rd party OS devs like Samsung to start implementing RCS in their own messaging apps. There's even a 3rd party app on iOS that can use it now.
Definitely not. Devs have been asking for an RCS API in Android for ages, and Google hasn't added it.
Sharing media over MMS is a garbage experience. I would need to convince them to use something reasonable, which is a lost cause.
Ask them to go physically to your house if they ever need to tell you something urgent. If they refuse to, good riddance
Oh ya I'll just tell my grandparents to drive 10-12 hours to get to the other side of the island every time they want to talk to me or see my face
@cnnrduncan @csolisr My grandparents are on Signal ๐คท
Incredibly based grandparents
Considering I live 2000 miles away from them and do not want them randomly showing up at my door, no thanks lol.
Same.
Facebook is the main social media in Africa. It's not a bommer thing there, everyone use it.
Africa makes more sense. Imperialist nations want to influence the entire continent if possible.
USA, China, and Russia are all vying over the global-south like vultures
At least a billion people
Australians apparently. That's what my cousins said as the explanation for why their family chat was on Facebook.
Messenger is the most popular messaging app in Australia by far. #2 is Apple/Facetime (which is about equal with WhatsApp in terms of market share) but there's a huge gap between #1 and #2.
Living in western Europe I would have said no one, but in most of central and eastern Europe is strictly necessary to reach anyone.
Only the stupidest of humanity.
Well, there goes central Europe
And they put a notification on your phone about it that you can't remove... this infuriates me more than it should
You're right, I did not even notice the persistent notification! What a unnecessarily annoying move. This deserved an early bird uninstall for me...
Yeah I uninstalled as soon as I realised it was a persistent notification. Fuck that.
At least on my phone I could swipe the notification a bit to the left to reveal the cog, "disable notifications", and disable the "standard" category of notifications.
In other news, there's no way in hell I'm installing the full app. People texting me there will just have to wait until I'm by a computer.
Yes, but that is the same notification category as your default one for messages, so disabling it will result in no message notifications at all.
Yeah I just turned off every notification from Messenger Lite after seeing that. Next month I might just uninstall it completely, or opt for the Matrix bridge.
Another reason my phone is rooted. I want to have the final say in whether I can remove a notification or not on my phone.
I'm also on the uninstall boat with y'all, for this reason. Lucky me, I haven't used messenger in a year so when I saw the notification didn't hesitate. Haven't logged on FB in years so I doubt anyone will try to reach me there.
I swear my battery life improved after I uninstalled messenger for a while and got worse after reinstalling recently.
I wouldn't have installed it except I was in the process of getting back in touch with a few old friends. Was totally worth it for that.
I'm on the same page. I would prefer not having those apps installed or even an account, but my friends are more worth to me than my IT ideals.
It's too bad that your friendship isn't more important than ten minutes of inconvenience for them to install a different app or to give you their actual phone number.
I find that you're making a lot of assumptions on my friendships based on my 4 lines comment.
I do chat with my friends via SMS or phone cause I indeed have their number. But you can't deny that SMS for group chats is pretty gruesome.
Based on that, everybody is used to those popular chat apps and have their other group chats on them. Why would I make them change when they work for what's intended? Privacy is the best argument, but they may not all care enough to not find it bothering. So I don't bother ยฏ_(ใ)_/ยฏ
Live and let live
They dont work for what's intended. Its an illusion to pull money from your content and your potential ad revenue.
Thats not getting into any of the other sociological effects of a huge amount of people getting their daily news from Facebook message headlines.
It's exactly what social media platforms, particularly Facebook, want. They want you to feel locked in because your friends are there
I don't know why people don't just use more SMS. You don't need all the fancy bells and whistles, it shouldn't change the conversation you're having, especially with the gradual rollout of rich messages, and it has a wider audience than Facebook will ever have. More people have SMS than have Facebook
I've found the same thing with the IG and FB apps which is why I don't use them. I stick to the mobile web versions but they have made it difficult to message from the android mobile web without extra steps like desktop mode. Even then there can be missing functionality.
There was also an article earlier this year where they were purposely "testing" the apps that forcibly drained some user batteries quickly without a care for the actual users affected. Since I'm often using my phone for navigation in the woods I want as much battery life as possible please.
Anyways if it wasn't for older friends and family members I would no longer be using FB.
Certainly a argument can be made for this. For me it is the extended family and contacts from hobbies /sports. Without FB they would have completely faded out of my life. This low level method maintains a loose family connections once maintained by the senior family members that have long since passed. As for the others yes completely disappear from your life...
Of course it did. They're tracking everything you do, and everywhere you go, even when the app isn't running. Don't believe me? Install the Duck Duck Go browser and enable App Tracking Protection. You will be shocked by the amount of shit so many apps track in the background, but Facebook is one of the worst.
You can use Beeper to replace all your communication apps. That way you only have to install one app, and you don't have to have Meta installed.
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
Currently free but also will be a Plus version eventually rolling out, according to the FAQ
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 โMatrix Bridgeโ 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 donโt want to use that service, you can self-host the bridges.
I signed up for this month's ago and I'm still not in. Every time I log into the app to check my waitlist, I'm some random number in the 3000s, and not always lower than last time. Why is this do you know?
If you're technically savvy, it looks like you could self-host the application. https://github.com/beeper/self-host
This is what I did, took a bit to get it configured but works great once your up and running.
How long have you been running it so far? Any issues?
A few months for the Facebook and Instagram bridges and I just setup the Google messages Bridge last week.
I'll take a look, cheers. Got an Raspberry Pi lying about somewhere I could use
I've never heard of beeper, but it sounds pretty inaccessible from what your saying. Is there something that makes it worth it? Or is it just another messaging app that nobody I need to speak with is using?
I believe Beeper is Matrix under the hood. They have just made it more accessible with a new interface and pre-installed bridges.
Just signed up myself, about 40k in line it seems. Sounds like reinventing Trillian/Gaim/Pidgin/etc...
It's a modern take on the Pidgin concept. Pidgin ran locally on one computer and didn't sync anything between any of your other Pidgin installs. Also, your login details for every account were usually in plaintext on disk. In practice, it feels
Beeper (really Matrix + bridges) is a network service that you can access with a browser, mobile app, whatever.
Yep, didn't mean it to sound like I was putting it down. Sounds like a cool concept.
I was in the wait list for only 20 days, according to the email when I got in. No idea why I got in so fast but others have been waiting months.
I signed up when it was first announced over a year ago. As of a couple months ago I still hadn't gotten approved. I signed up again and within a couple days I got approved. You should try signing up again.
Genuinely I just found an invite code from Google. Once you're in the app is pretty much as advertised.
This sucks.
Can't ditch it completely due to family, but got a few more contacts over on Signal after this announcement.
Just log in to Facebook on desktop every couple of days. If they want speedy responses, they will know yto try an aternative medium.
I donโt use Facebook so I donโt know -
Why canโt you just have a group text with your family.
Because SMS doesn't support group chats and MMS is expensive garbage (50c/300kb is fucked)
I can't uninstall the Facebook app from my phone (not unless I use ADB), so it's disabled. I uninstalled Messenger. I pinned a post on my FB page that said if people needed to contact me they can email me or text me. I have posted about why folks should leave these platforms until I am blue in the face. If they want to make the switch, they will. If they want to reach out, they will.
Eventually, I want to get an unlocked phone, load a custom ROM, and tell the big platforms to fuck off. I resent how difficult they have made that, and I resent how complacent we have become because of it.
Most phones can be unlocked provided you own it. Easier than you might think!
Carrier unlocked and oem bootloader unlocking are two very different things.
In canada, all phones must now be free of carrier locks, but bootloader unlocking is a pain. The us version of my current phone can be oem unlocked.
Mine can't.
So, i use a lot of adb/shizuku
If I can get a custom ROM to work on my current phone, I'm all for it! I was looking at specific unlocked phone brands because some custom ROMS are optimized for that hardware.
Check out the XDA Forums section for your carrier's version of whatever model of phone you have. Not all carriers make it trivial (or even possible) to unlock the bootloader and flash custom recovery images, but if it's possible then someone there has certainly done it.
Thank you for this!
My next phone will be a pixel so I can flash grapheneOS on it. I don't think my Snapdragon S21 can run custom firmware without triggering Samsung Knox though
Your phone came with Facebook installed and you can't uninstall it? Fucking gross! Which phone is that so I know to never buy it?
This could be true of basically any Android phone on specific carriers, at least in the US.
I guess I'll always stick with the Pixel Pro then.
Sony for one. My Xperia One III (a fucking $1300 or whatever flagship) comes with a completely uninstallable Facebook apk
Just gonna leave this here: https://www.signal.org/
Well, family at least is going to be willing to switch to signal...
Or install an app called Metal.
It's a wrapper for the mobile webpage with all the intrusive permissions disabled by default.
I just looked for this app and it looks like it hasn't been updated since 2018. Am I wrong?
Try Hermit on Android then. You're looking for a PWA wrapper app that lets you add them to your homescreen. Then again, your Android web browser should already have this with the "Add to homescreen" feature.
On the play store page I got the message "not available on your device, this app has been designed for an older version of Android", not updated since June 2018 and I can't find it anywhere else, seems you're not
Just delete every meta/fb app. There are plenty of alternatives now. They will never love you.
If people are still playing within metaโs walls they are lost and wonโt be leaving anytime soon.
They didnโt miss the boat, they straight up ignored it. Nothing has changed so why should their poorly reasoned decision?
The main issue here is how aggressive Fuckbook is when it comes to the messager, since they started to hide it on mobile devices they fucked with every attempt to revive that functionality with a none Fuckbook apps till the creator gave up. They are bad enough with normal clients (most of those died for a reason) but somehow even worse when it comes to the messager!
Here's an idea. Stop using FB.
I get it, your boomer parents/grandparents don't know how to use anything else... But you can show them. It's very similar and doesn't suck as much.
I understand this move from FB too... Rather than maintain two apps, that both do the same thing, just maintain one. However, without the ability to turn off all the bloat and crap in the one app to make it very similar to the other, I don't see that being viable for many, and I'm sure they don't let you do that, so, ha ha, get fucked.
Anyways, Facebook is a cancer.
All of my international friends use Facebook Messenger.
e-mail is an alternative, yes, but to put obstacles to how can you be contacted is how you lose touch with each other.
If I'm always going to where my friends are, and they never come to where I am, are they really my friends?
These are the questions I constantly mull over to try to figure out. It's extremely important to me that me and my friends are on equal footing, we're both partners in the friendship, neither is following the other's lead. I've lost many friends by simply not being the first person to send a message.
To me, I'd rather have fewer friends who have me as an active part of their life, versus a lot of friends I'm constantly making concessions for that wouldn't do the same for me.
With all that said, I'm not you and I have no control over your choices. Do what you will.
Family is not the problem, everyone else is.
Matrix with a facebook messenger bridge? I know just the one finnish instance that offers bridging (pikaviestin.fi), though. I host my own home server.
@Suppoze @MentalEdge Well, that lead to my Facebook account being locked. And I wasn't able to unlock it, since the associated phone number was an old one.
Wow. Rough.
It'll be a good excuse to make anyone who wants to talk to you, use something else.
This probably won't work for long since they're rolling out E2EE for Messenger.
It works with whatsapp.
Oh so it's just basically a different UI over WhatsApp?
No. Due to how whatsapp works, you have to have a phone with whatsapp installed, somewhere.
The matrix bridge connects to that, and "puppets" your account, bringin those chats into your matrix account.
Matrix can bridge to a ton of different chat services, but each one can work a little differently. They usually don't support voice and video.
Matrix is what's behind the scenes for beeper, for example.
Ahh gotcha. Sounds neat!
Would beeper be a better solution for you? Self-hosted beeper, and a matrix client on your phone.
ATM beeper Facebook bridge works fine. Use it daily. I'd prefer to self host beeper/matrix/bridges but haven't had time to set it up and got an invite to beeper a few weeks ago.
But this means people will continue to use that network. It's not desiderable for me
Can you pass any guides on how to do this?
https://letmegooglethat.com/?q=beeper+facebook+bridge+self+hosting+guide
No, they don't.
Lol yeah not gonna happen.
I have personally made a switch to Delta Chat, and will be e-mailing people from now on. I will be checking facebook occasionally, as I face the same issue as others in this thread: Facebook is the default communication tool in my country. However, I have told everyone I'm connected with, that I no longer have a mobile app for facebook communication on my phone, and will only respond swiftly og they use e-mail or SMS. Let's see how that goes.
you can go 1 step further and try to use signal, It's much more convenient.
Your contacts would all need to sign up on Signal as well, while they already have an e-mail address.
Well that's annoying. I only ever use it for if I'm trying to buy something off a stranger on one of those facebook market groups. Which only happens a couple of times a year.
So I guess I will have to install their big version and then uninstall it after I buy the thing.
Not incredibly surprising given how little it's been updated and how things like clicking links doesn't work. Definitely exhausted by how aggressively things are just getting worse now.
Yeah, both Messenger Lite and Facebook Lite are fucked. Post a photo or video on Facebook Lite and it's guaranteed to be blurry piece of shit. If it's shot horizontal, it's going to be low-res vertical with letterboxing on the top and bottom. I have to hop on the main app just to post a discernable video for my family.
If I didn't live on the other side of the continent and Facebook were my only real lifeline to my friends and family, I wouldn't use it at all anymore. But now there's this sunken-cost fallacy shit on top of it all, and how I get daily memories from the deceased like my father and grandmother. "Hope you're having fun in Canada, love you, Gram". Some of these messages are still applicable today, and I don't know how to separate from that.
Take screenshots, load them all into a folder and use some kind of gallery widget or app to show you one daily.
I think I've seen calendars that will show you an image a day but I don't know how well you can set images to certain days, etc.
All you are saying is its too convenient for you to stop using it. What makes it less convenient is learning about alternative ways to meet the same ends.
You'll find like a lot of others that giving up control to Facebook doesn't necessarily equate to the most convenient tool
You can use Facebook Lite instead of the main Messenger app if you want to. It's got messaging integrated into it.
For now...
I doubt Facebook Lite is going anywhere - it's needed in poorer regions where very old phones are used. Lite renders a lot of its UI on a server (similar to how Opera Mini works) which is how it's so lightweight.
How will it affect me? Well! It won't because I dont use facebook. Lol
How will it affect me? Well! It won't because I don't use Android. Lol
Are you using video/audio call functionality? If not, get on the beeper waiting list. It supports connecting to facebook messenger, but it doesn't support video/audio calls.
What keeps this from being blocked by the service providers like any other third party app?
Probably nothing. I haven't heard of other apps being blocked. But Beeper has been running for like a couple of years now (but recently changed to a freemium model, before it was subscription only and had some people had been on the waiting list for a year+, they said they are aiming to get down to no wait in the next 3 months, and that was probably a month or two ago).
If you think it's at risk of being blocked, that doesn't mean you can't make hay while the sun is shining ๐
At least for third party WhatsApp clients, they have tended to go down by not only seizing to work, but with WhatsApp temporarily blocking any account connecting from them.
I'm curious if there's a solution not so much for convenience on android, but it would be a game changer for Linux phones where WhatsApp and Facebook messager is not available at all except in the web interfaces. :)
It seems Whatsapp wants to keep their secure image, and doesn't allow third party apps. Your only choice is basically to give the third party app your login details, which is against the Ts & Cs.
Facebook provides a way to authorise third party apps and grant them access to your data. It seems to be a different end goal, and I couldn't find anything about facebook banning peoples accounts or even blocking third party apps.
Thank you for the tip, I'll sign up. I occasionally use the audio call functionality, but shouldn't be an issue.
Yeh, it works pretty great. And theyโre working hard to cut the waiting time down.
NIce! Thanks :)
Does it support image attachments sent via Messenger?
Yes, all file attachmemts. See chart here.
Some quirks that I think are notable:
Otherwise FB messenger is one of the better supported platforms on beeper in terms of feature support.
Ah, that's excellent and just what I need. I'll probably self host in the next two months.
Just remember the client itself is proprietary (as their business model will be client features), but the bridges are open source.
So you can self-host a facebook bridge and matrix server, but you'll need to connect to it from a matrix client. You can't do it from the beeper applications.
The Beeper application is a fork of element, but you should be able to use any matrix client. In the past I've self-hosted the facebook bridge and successfully used it with Element so don't let it put you off ๐
Nope.
It'll die.
We're all on another app anyway.
Lots of options aside from Facebook.
Not if you need to communicate with people who use facebook.
Not if it's them that need to communicate with me.
Lots of options for other people
/s
At least use messenger with vanced patches to get rid of all the ads in conversation view.
I stopped using anything meta years ago. People who want to stay in touch with me and I them continued to stay in touch. If those people will not stay in touch with you, good riddance to them.
Its really not that hard to use SMS or signal anyhow. I'm not entirely against WhatsApp either although I dont think I would ever leave it installed on my device long term
Welp that's not happening, so long Myspace, I mean book of faces
Something like Island/Insular/Shelter might help. I just discovered these apps recently and am currently testing Shelter. It seems to work.
Probably time to bridge from XMPP then
weird... i use Facebook Lite and Messenger lite prompted me to continue my conversation there
I thought Facebook lite didn't include messenger features? If they're bundling it all into one lite app, I'd actually say that's a GOOD thing.
I don't want to use Facebook on my phone. I just need to talk to people on there that refuse to use other apps.
So now people relying on the Lite variants will not be able to chat anymore, as Facebook Lite requires Messenger Lite a little time after it got released?
Use slimsocial to reply to those contacts that still insist to use that messaging app and tell them that you aren't reachable over there anymore, ghost any subsequent message
Interesting, I didn't know about this
This might be a bit annoying. On my Realme phone, no amount of setting changes stops it from killing Messenger randomly. It didn't kill Lite so I could trust it, and put up with it despite its issues.
Well, at least the full app has the opt-in E2EE chats.
@Suppoze Is it possible to use Facebook in a browser? Or are they forcing you to use their app?
The mobile site is unusable, and if you switch it to desktop it's very hard to use on a touchscreen.
If anyone has alternatives, I'd appreciate it!
I've tried, and on the mobile site there's no way to access Messenger. Only workaround is if you force the desktop version on messenger.com but it is very inconvenient.
Supposedly you will be able to use FB Lite app to chat. I got the same message, uninstalled Messenger Lite and verified that FB Lite app works for chatting.