Learn how to protect your privacy by preventing your iPhone from automatically uploading your contacts to Facebook and having Facebook delete your contacts it has already saved.
How to stop your iPhone from uploading contacts to Facebook
How to leave a group conversation in Facebook Messenger
Facebook Messenger is a great app for chatting with your Facebook friends. And you can have one-on-one conversations or chat with a group. But there may come a time when the conversation is over. While you cannot currently leave a one-on-one conversation, you can leave a group chat.
Here's how to leave a group conversation in Facebook Messenger on the app or website.
Instagram is testing killing the like count on photos, new Create Mode coming soon
Instagram is gaining four cool new features while testing killing the like count on photos with a small percentage of users in Canada as a way to combat bots that generate fake likes.
Messenger news: a rebuilt iOS app with <30MB footprint, watching videos together & more
Facebook's annual F8 developers conference kicked off today with news that a desktop Messenger app is in the works, but we've now learned details of what the company has in store for the mobile messaging app which is getting rebuilt for speed and small memory footprint.
Facebook building voice assistant to compete with Alexa and Siri
Facebook is working on a voice assistant to compete with Alexa and Siri, according to a new report from CNBC. Citing sources familiar with the project, the outlet says a special devision within the social media giant has been working on the initiative for more than a year.
Facebook takes Messenger’s Dark Mode global
Facebook a month and a half ago began testing a pure black interface in Messenger's mobile app, and today a new Dark Mode setting has gone live for all Messenger users globally.
Facebook might reintegrate Messenger back into its eponymous mobile app
Facebook might be prepping to reintegrate basic messaging functions back into its main mobile app for iPhone and iPad, eight years after separating Messenger into a standalone app.
This is how Facebook’s algorithms pick and rank stuff in your News Feed
One of the ways Facebook is working to regain user trust lost amid privacy scandals involves a new effort to provide better transparency as to how its News Feed algorithms work.
Facebook employees considered quitting after Apple blocked their internal apps
Apple has showed Facebook who has the power in a controversial app dispute that erupted following discovery that the social network not only distributed a data-collecting research app that was approved only for internal use but paid people ages 13 to 35 to install it.
Zuckerberg: WhatsApp, Instagram & Messenger merger to create an iMessage-like layer for SMS
Facebook recently revealed plans to merge your WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger threads so you could easily message people across these services, and now CEO Mark Zuckerberg has laid out his rationale for making this controversial move.
NYT: Facebook to integrate WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger chats
Facebook is reportedly planning to integrate chats from its three major properties: WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger.
This was reported Friday by The New York Times. A Facebook spokesperson has confirmed the report's findings via a written statement to the newspaper.
The different chats should be merged sometime in 2020.
According to sources, Facebook's boss and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg recently summoned WhatsApp employees to announce the merging of the company's messagings services.
They balked at the plan, the article reads:
On December 7, employees gathered around microphones at WhatsApp’s offices to ask Mr. Zuckerberg why he was so invested in merging the services. Some said his answers were vague and meandering. Several WhatsApp employees have left or plan to leave because of Mr. Zuckerberg’s plans, the people said.
If Facebook proceeds with the plan, customers will be able to start a chat with another user irrespective of whether they're on Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp or Instagram. As an example, a Messenger user could start chatting with a friend of Instagram, or vice versa. In another instance, a WhatsApp user would be able to chat directly with a contact on Instagram.
From the article:
By stitching the apps’ infrastructure together, Mr. Zuckerberg wants to increase the utility of the social network, keeping its billions of users highly engaged inside its ecosystem. If people turn more regularly to Facebook-owned properties for texting, they may forgo rival messaging services, such as those from Apple and Google, said the people, who declined to be identified because the moves are confidential.
Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp will remain separate apps: the company will not merge them into a unified mega-app for chatting.
This integration would include end-to-end encryption to protect communications as the messages are transmitted between the three different chat services.
It was however unclear at post time how this would work in practice considering that people go by their real name on Facebook versus the anonymity that Instagram and WhatsApp provide.
Today, WhatsApp requires people to register only a phone number to sign up for the service. By contrast, Facebook and Facebook Messenger ask users to provide their real identities. Matching Facebook and Instagram users to their WhatsApp handles could give pause to those who prefer keeping their use of each app compartmentalized.
Is this a good idea, do you think?
Let us know in the comments!
Apple hires prominent Facebook critic Sandy Parakilas to bolster its privacy team
Apple has recruited the talents of one Sandy Parakilas, a former Facebook employee who has become a vocal privacy advocate and one of the social network’s most prominent critics. He has been hired to work in Apple's privacy team as a product manager.