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Facebook Forcing Users To Use Messenger App, But Isn’t Listening Into User Conversations

By Jinger Jarrett
Published on: 11:57 PST, Jun 5, 2016

Facebook is continuing to make changes to their mobile service, as well as adding new features to their social media site. After Google launched Google+, Mark Zuckerberg put Facebook on lock down with the intention of competing with Google+ as the top social site on the internet. Although Facebook is the second most visited site on the internet, it’s the top social media site.

The Next Web reported that Facebook is trying to force mobile users to use their messenger app instead of the messenger within the Facebook app. Facebook is moving towards disabling the in-app messenger. Currently the app only issues a warning message when users try to use in-app messaging, and so they can close the message and then continue using the messaging app.

As previously reported in Inquisitr, one of the new features that Facebook is planning to add to its service is an in app camera. The standalone camera app would be similar to the Snap Chat camera app. Facebook has released few details about the app, although the company has acquired WhatsApp, possibly leading to Facebook capturing the messenger market.

Facebook continues to add new features to its messenger service to make it more of an all in one app for users. Another feature that Facebook has been working to complete is its version of a wallet. Currently users can send money through Facebook, although there are limitations on the feature.

Although Facebook continues to add new features to its social site, it hasn’t been without problems. Gizmodo reported that some Facebook users believe that the site uses their microphones on their phones to discover what ads to serve. Users believe that this is meant to allow the social site to serve up more ads to users.

In a blog post published by Facebook, the company rushed to assure users that they are not using users’ phones to find out what ads to serve. The theory that Facebook was using users’ phone microphones to serve relevant ads came from Kelli Burns, a professor of mass communication at the University of South Florida. Burns said she tested the theory using her phone.

Facebook dismissed the accusations outright and said that although it can access a user’s microphone, it only uses the microphone with consent.

“Facebook does not use microphone audio to inform advertising or News Feed stories in any way. Businesses are able to serve relevant ads based on people’s interests and other demographic information, but not through audio collection.”

The Indian Express Tech reported that another feature added to Facebook Messenger is new emojis. The new emojis, about 1,500, will allow users to express themselves in a lot more ways than were previously done. In addition to the new expressions, users will also be able to change the colors of the expressions. They also include a female police officer, runner, pedestrian, surfer, and swimmer, and will include more female emojis than previously released. They will be standardized across platforms, so they will look the same regardless of which platform users are on: Android, iOS, or other platform.

Other options that users will have is to change the skin color of the emojis. One interesting feature that has been added is that now there will be red heads. Facebook said that the new emojis will allow a better representation of users across the world. The emojis have now been rolled out globally.

[Photo by Pixabay]

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