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Facebook Q&A – why was Facebook Messenger forced on users?

Facebook Q&A – why was Facebook Messenger forced on users?
Jonathan Riggall

Jonathan Riggall

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Yesterday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg hosted a Q&A session on the social network for users, and among other things, he responded to user complaints about the Facebook Messenger app that was made a requirement this year.

So, why did the company force us to install Facebook Messenger?

“The first thing I want to do is acknowledge that asking everyone in our community to install a new app is a big ask. We really believe that this is a better experience and the messaging is really important. Each app can do one thing well.”

While many people were annoyed by having to install an extra app to send Facebook messages, it’s fair to say that it does work better as a separate app (although as we showed this week, it’s not the most secure or private chat app).

Another controversial Facebook development, your algorithm-curated News Feed, was also addressed by the grey t-shirt wearing billionaire. According to Zuckerberg, we only see about ten percent of the stories that appear on the News Feed.

The idea behind curating it for us is so that the ten percent we do see is the best ten percent. That claim is harder to swallow when it means you don’t see all the posts from pages you’ve liked and are given days-old status updates from friends and sponsored stories.

The Q&A session was recorded, and you can watch the whole video here.

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Follow Jonathan on Twitter: @jonathanriggall

Jonathan Riggall

Jonathan Riggall

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