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Communications Facebook Software

Facebook Finally Ends XMPP Support For 3rd Party Chat 63

Posted by timothy from the jabber-away dept.
New submitter AcquaCow writes: Facebook has been pushing their Messenger app to all devices, requiring it for chatting with friends and family. It was announced last year that they would be ending their chat API and that the service would end on April 30, 2015. April passed, so did May, but the service remained functional. Finally, as of July 7th, 2015 it has not been possible to connect to chat.facebook.com. This doesn't seem to be an outage at this point. Looks like we have to wait for 3rd party messenger apps to adopt support for Facebook's Platform API v2 to allow new connectivity.
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Facebook Finally Ends XMPP Support For 3rd Party Chat More

Facebook Finally Ends XMPP Support For 3rd Party Chat

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  • Facebook destined for AOL Status (Score:5, Insightful)

    by sycodon ( 149926 ) on Thursday July 16, 2015 @09:19AM (#50124611)

    Facebook is following the same path as AOL.

    In their megalomaniac desire to be all things and control all things, they are walling themselves into an environment with half assed software, surveillance, ads, and privacy violations.

    Just a matter of time.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by bondsbw ( 888959 )

      Let's not compare them as if they are even a hint of the same thing. AOL was a dial-up ISP and died because of broadband. The only way Facebook will die is if something significantly more desirable comes along to replace it.

      • Re:Facebook destined for AOL Status (Score:4, Informative)

        by sycodon ( 149926 ) on Thursday July 16, 2015 @09:48AM (#50124837)

        Technically, yes.

        But philosophically they are the same. They want people to live in Facebook. Get their news from there, make appointments, exchange messages (emails) etc. I'd bet that Zukerberg dreams of being his own ISP that only provides Facebook.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by chihowa ( 366380 )

        AOL "died" before broadband came along. AOL, like Compuserve, was a walled garden before it was an ISP (proper). Once the internet as a whole began to provide more compelling content, forums, etc, they shifted to a primary ISP role, but prior to that access to the internet was limited and sketchy.

        AOL becoming an ISP was the way that it died. Before that, it was an absolutely huge service with tons of subscribers.

      • AOL was a dial-up ISP and died because of broadband.

        I would love to be as dead [aol.com] as AOL is. Just because a companies original primary business dried up doesn't mean they didn't survive or thrive. The ability to adapt has served them well despite what the 3lit3 h@x0rs think about them.

        As for Facebook they look to be dipping their toes into every new trend on the horizon just to cover their bases. Whether they can stay relevant or not remains to be seen.

      • Death by stoning sounds more desirable than being subjected to FB.

      • AOL started to die long before it became an ISP. It was an OSP (Online Service Provider) back when those things existed, along with CompuServe and a number of other players. They had their own walled garden and, eventually, also allowed web browsing via a gateway (they used a non-IP network protocol for their dial-up users and so you couldn't initially just run a web browser, you had to use the one embedded in their client). Most of their value came from the stuff that was exclusive to AOL. You may reme

  • Really? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 16, 2015 @09:24AM (#50124651)

    Because i'm connected to Facebook chat via Gimp right now...

  • Use purple-facebook (Score:5, Informative)

    by sombragris ( 246383 ) on Thursday July 16, 2015 @09:26AM (#50124661) Homepage

    In libpurple (read: Pidgin and other apps that might use it for messaging) you can connect via purple-facebook [github.com], which is a Facebook chat protocol plugin. There are still some glitches but it's definitely usable.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by alexhs ( 877055 )

      I will have to check that, but I'm using Adium (for Mac OS X). It's also relying on libpurple, so I hope it will work.
      By the way, the submitter is uninformed, Facebook Chat API (using OAuth) stopped working weeks ago. But it seems login/password XMPP was still working [adium.im]. I meant to do just that, but I guess it's too late now :)

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Feels like a Microsoft playbook...
      Embrace and Extend

      XMPP was popular before Facebook and they integrated with it. Now with Facebook having sufficient critical mass in chat, they drop the open standard and mandate that interoperation must happen through their proprietary interface.

      Before people would have asked why Facebook did not support the most popular chat protocol (XMPP). Now people will ask why a chat client does not support the most popular social platform (Facebook).

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by allo ( 1728082 )

        xmpp and most popular? you're joking, aren't you?

        Most popular (despite irc) is ICQ.

      • Facebook never supported Federated XMPP, which is what makes it actually useful. Using SMTP and IMAP for mail isn't that useful if your mail server won't exchange mail with anyone else's. Google Talk supported federated XMPP, I could easily add Google Talk users to my XMPP roster on my own server and chat to them, but now Google is trying to use hangouts to replace Google Talk.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by DrewMIT ( 98823 )

      thank you so much for posting this. This might be my first /. comment in nearly a decade, that's how valuable this link was for me.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AcquaCow ( 56720 )

      Aah, managed to download this plugin and get it working. It connects to a different server than chat.facebook.com as well.

      I've noticed in the comments that some folks can still use xmpp with chat.facebook.com, but whatever local server that DNS is pointing me at is no longer accepting connections.

      Thanks.

  • But is v2 useful for Chat? (Score:3)

    by R.Mo_Robert ( 737913 ) on Thursday July 16, 2015 @09:27AM (#50124667)

    Facebook's API description [facebook.com] says about v2: "In v2.0, the friends API endpoint returns the list of a person's friends who are also using your app. In v1.0, the response included all of a person's friends." This doesn't sound like it will be a useful replacement for their XMPP chat interface unless everybody is using the same third-party app, or maybe I'm missing something.

    • Re:But is v2 useful for Chat? (Score:5, Informative)

      by gstoddart ( 321705 ) on Thursday July 16, 2015 @09:31AM (#50124711) Homepage

      Who says they intend it to be useful replacement?

      Facebook wants everybody to run their application so they can mine all your fucking data.

      The don't give a crap about 3rd part clients, they care about ads and analytics.

      Seriously, stop expecting benevolence from Facebook. They're greedy bastards, nothing more. They're not going to do a damned thing which doesn't maximize their bottom line.

      • Who says they intend it to be useful replacement?

        Umm...whoever wrote the headline and summary (and that's certainly what they implied), because that's what I was responding to rather than expressing a personal viewpoint that Facebook owes me benevolence?

        • Nobody but you said "useful replacement", and certainly not in the context that it worked with other XMMP based chat stuff.

          Facebook is making a replacement beneficial for them.

          People not using their platform need not apply. Facebook doesn't care about them.

          • OK, fine, I meant to say "usable" instead of "useful." That is clearly what the last sentence of TFS is suggesting v2 should be usable for, as if it's just a new API that v1 users need to migrate to.

  • Sorry, don't really have a lengthy comment, it's all in the subject.

  • Someone was walking down a lane in their datacentre and noticed some lights blinking in the corner of their eye. They turn, and see a machine they remembered. They then said: "Hmm... I thought I turned this one off ages ago." And pushed the power button.

  • ..I stopped using Facebook Chat when they started wanting a separate app on my phone for it. I don't use it enough to justify a separate app. So now it's just an annoyance as the main Facebook app keeps telling me I have a message, but won't let me read the message - they never bothered to remove the panel from the main app that use to be for chats, it's now a promotional for the other app.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Tool Man ( 9826 )

      It's actually the main Facebook app that I uninstalled. Messenger is OK for its intended purpose, but the main one was what doing sketchy things I didn't want. I now use a mobile browser instead, so their functionality is limited to what the browser and phone ecosystem will permit.

      • And I would say any application whose functionality can be replaced with the web page should be uninstalled.

        The app is just there to scrape your contacts and serve you ads.

        Why give them access to that crap? I would no sooner trust Facebook with access to my phone that Zuckerfuck would allow me access to his wallet.

        Stop treating Facebook as trustworthy. They're not. They're an ad and analytics company.

  • I use a technology called TELEPHONE for chatting with friends and family. While it doesn't support XMPP, it supports a technology called MOUTH quite well. Next week I will be trying a new technology called 'IN PERSON'. I hear IN PERSON supports MOUTH as well, as well as TOUCH (just like a smartphone screen!). I will report back on how it goes.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by godrik ( 1287354 )

      While I like text-based communications, I agree with you. I must say that you pack way more information in a 2 minute phone call than in a 2 minute chat session. text is good for asynchrony and logging.
      When chatting with collaborators (email or IM), if we reach the point where we are actively waiting on somebody else's reply, we switch to voice communication.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Just make sure you don't get a virus ;)

  • Pidgin hasn't been working for me for several days now... maybe I need to update it

  • I found out recently that it is not possible to log out of Facebook Messenger on a mobile device.
    I found this annoying cause anyone that can access a tablet can effectively check one's message and wreak havoc.
    If one has a jealous or abusive spouse/partner/girlfriend/boyfriend this is clearly a big no-no, even if your significant other is not 'unstable' even innocent conversations might misconstrued.
    Also, if third parties get access to a mobile device and can unlock it, this means that they can check your
  • Is XMPP dying right now? Cause if it is, it is sad. Google Chat may be the only XMPP chat that's supported by a big company. Companies want their own privatized protocol and bind their user in their own services: Whatsapp, Telegram, Line, Hangouts, iMessage and etc., and I can't talk to my friends if they're on a different service. Are we entering a age when good old Internet spirits are no more respected? Or is it just how this world should be in the first place?

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by allo ( 1728082 )

      Google XMPP is dead. XMPP now works only with TLS and google refuses it. So its disconnected from all other servers.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Which is to say federated XMPP through Google is dead. XMPP to Google still works if you want to chat within their ecosystem.

        • Didn't they say they're planning to retire XMPP for Chat in general eventually, in favor of whatever proprietary crap they're using for Hangouts?

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by allo ( 1728082 )

            Afaik there are rumors, which are for example based on the fact, that their XMPP isn't useful anymore and gtalk itself is discontinued.

            • It was already disabled entirely in my Gmail account and the only offered replacement was Hangouts.

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by allo ( 1728082 )

                btw: do you know somebody, who seriously uses hangouts? i only know whatsapp / skype people.

                • I do know people that use it, but that's not only because Google is now basically pushing it as their version of iMessage for Android devices. It has group video calling for up to 10 people and a concurrent text conversation with up to 150 people at a time, which I think are the main features that have been attracting the people to the service. It also works cross device - so if someone on their Samsung Note 4 initiates a Hangout, everyone from people on tablets to PCs can join in, which is a pretty big dea

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Dan541 ( 1032000 )

      Companies want their own privatized protocol and bind their user in their own services: Whatsapp, Telegram, Line, Hangouts, iMessage and etc., and I can't talk to my friends if they're on a different service. Are we entering a age when good old Internet spirits are no more respected? Or is it just how this world should be in the first place?

      We're going back to the days of bulletin boards where you can only talk to people on the same service. We are going backwards.

      • We're going back to the days of bulletin boards where you can only talk to people on the same service. We are going backwards.

        Not only that, look at how many (usually small) companies don't have, or don't update their actual website, and instead rely on Facebook and Twitter to for updates.

    • It's really sad that XMPP went the way it did, the protocol deserved more than it got.

      The biggest showstopper was the lack of NAT-piercing Voice/Video/Filetransfers, and even though self-hosting has never been easier with Prosody... XMPP has never had worse prospects. Unfortunately. :(

      • The biggest showstopper was the lack of NAT-piercing Voice/Video/Filetransfers

        XMPP has had that for years. The problem was fragmentation. There are at least a dozen file transfer XEPs and people were allowed to publish XEPs without a reference implementation. The foundation should have made sure that there was a reference server implementation and a BSD-licensed reference client library and that standards track XEPs had all of the core functionality that people actually wanted. Instead, they allowed loads of incompatible XEPs for basic things to be published and never selected on

        • It has had that for years yet not a single client has managed to give a easy-to-use alternative for all these years. Not one.

          If Jingle require STUN/TURN then there must be an easy way to discover these services. I've been waiting patiently for a decent client/server combo, but none has materialized, and by now it's too late. (And yes, Prosody kicks ass and takes names, but clients are still lacking, big time).

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