Meta is pulling the plug on Messenger Lite on Android

AlmightySnoo 🐢🇮🇱🇺🇦@lemmy.world to Android@lemmy.world – 101 points – Meta is pulling the plug on Messenger Lite on Android
theverge.com

tl;dr: Messenger Lite, Meta's "less than 10MB to download" lightweight version of Messenger, will no longer be available on Android after Sep 18, as Meta redirects users to the Messenger app. The main Messenger app will also drop SMS support next month.

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Too hard to track everything you're doing on your device in 10MB or less. They were almost certainly losing money (in the form of lost data) on that venture.

It's sad though, because for the developers I have to imagine there was a lot of insights to gleam on streamlining the main app from all the work that went into stripping it down to the essentials. Even if they only had 6 users, that knowledge must have had value that the executives couldn't wrap their heads around.

One of those 6 was me

Same here.

And me.. The main app was a nightmare with ads, and slow as shit when you're out and about.

Probably won't continue to use Facebook after the lite app goes.

I doubt that's actually the reason. This seems to line up with the roll out of end to end encrypted calls through Messenger, at the same time calling is being depreciated on the Facebook Portal device. My guess is either the library is too big or they don't have the staff working on the Lite projects like they used to. Bulk of the target audience for Messenger Lite would probably be using WhatsApp.

But the team may have been gutted with all the Metaverse obsession followed by the AI obsession.

No more simple web for you. You have to accept the full bloat.

Another anti consumer move by Meta. Messenger Lite just worked better and without stutters on my old device with less RAM. Plus the ability to send files was an added bonus, too.

I guess I'll have to use the web version of Facebook lite.

Thats why I use Beeper, yes I know that this is a closed source software but they made all bridges foss and if you want you can build your own beeper, I just hate messenger app and having messenger SMS whatsapp telegram discord and Twitter X in one place is a miracle.

Doesn't beeper use matrix bridges?

Yeah they are using matrix but bridges are their own creation. And they also fund devs of existing bridges.

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It makes sense as Facebook Lite got the ability to send messages a very long time ago.

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One note: if you have FB Lite, it will redirect to FB Lite instead.