Why Facebook doesn’t have my number and never will

Dear Facebook

You recently made YET ANOTHER change to the way you run things. I don’t know why we are all so surprised, you seem to do this continually, and whilst I realise that you do have to make changes to improve the service you provide, you seem to do stuff that annoys a lot of people, who don’t always want or need the changes you make. You change the timeline, the look and feel of Facebook, and tweak privacy settings which mean we have to alter the settings on personal Facebook, at alarmingly regular intervals, and it’s frankly, annoying.

I keep getting messages from you, saying that you are removing the message function from the current Facebook application on my iPhone and that I will need to download another app to receive and send Facebook messages. This is something that if I want to send or read messages sent via Facebook, on my phone, that I will have to do, not something I can opt-out of.

All the information about it, is here 

Basically, you bought WhatsApp, a stand-alone, free messaging service that people could use via their WiFi or current mobile phone plan, and now you have set up your own messaging service. You are telling us that we can use the service to message people who are not on Facebook with us, which I assume means you will want access to our contact list and data.

Thanks, but no thanks, for several reasons

• I don’t need a separate messaging service, I didn’t really like or use WhatsApp much, I already struggle to manage e-mail, SMS, Google Hangouts, and messages from Twitter, and other social media/messaging services. I don’t actually need another stand-alone app to send messages.
• I don’t want to allow you access to my contacts, and I don’t want my mobile number public on Facebook for people to contact me.
• I don’t want yet another battery chewing app, on my phone.

So, dear Facebook, once again, I am at odds with you, and love to hate you, or hating you, or something. I currently don’t have the Facebook app running on my phone, so will continue to manage, and will probably only check my messages when I log into my pc or iPad. I refuse to download a separate app for a messaging service I don’t want or need, didn’t ask for, and don’t use that much.

I realise there are some people who will and do like this app, I am sure it will be useful if you use the FB messaging. I personally hate the idea of a separate app, and won’t be using it. I would love to hear what other people think? You can read a basic explanation of what’s happening here.