this post was submitted on 21 Oct 2025
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Meta is removing its Messenger apps for Windows and macOS (www.theverge.com)
submitted 1 day ago by ardi60@reddthat.com to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] Gullible@sh.itjust.works 25 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

Considering the unrelenting data snatching capacity of the desktop app, there are only 3 plausible reasons Facebook, a company so maliciously money hungry that it might just prove the absence of god, would choose to deprecate it

1: something is fundamentally wrong with the app and they feel they are liable for greater damages than their potential profits

2: they’ve improved their data collection on browsers to the point that both methods are equally profitable

3: they don’t believe they need the money. (This one sincerely terrified me)

[–] tyler@programming.dev 34 points 1 day ago (3 children)
  1. They’re losing money on those teams and simplifying their stack will allow them to reduce costs.
[–] EmilyIsTrans@lemmy.blahaj.zone 11 points 1 day ago

Yeah, someone has looked at the spreadsheet and realised that basically no one uses the desktop app I'll bet

[–] tiramichu@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)
  1. They know people use the desktop app in order to not use the phone app, and they want those people on the phone instead because the phone is even more data-valuable and ad-valuable

Facebook web on mobile browser already doesn't allow messenger, and tells you to get the app. Pulling messenger from the desktop web browser will be the next move, forcing people to app completely.

Glad I don't use it.

[–] vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 8 hours ago

And that's when I'm installing Prosody on my VDS and telling family to use Conversations.

[–] FreedomAdvocate 7 points 1 day ago

and 5. They know that they're not going to lose any meaningful number of users by getting rid of these apps that just cost them money needlessly

[–] dan@upvote.au 7 points 1 day ago* (last edited 15 hours ago)

I don't have any knowledge about this in particular, but as someone with experience working at big tech companies, you're missing the most likely reason:

  1. Everyone who worked on it was reorged to higher priority teams, and nobody is left to maintain the apps

A lot of teams are only 3-6 developers, an engineering manager, a project manager, and a designer. Other roles like content design and QA are often shared across lots of teams. Developers with experience building native apps might be needed on other projects.