Messenger

Facebook may now be better known for violating the privacy of its users but it doesn't want anyone else from doing the same. All your best efforts to set all the privacy options on Facebook are all for naught, however, the moment some inquisitive friend or relative gets a hold of your phone and, therefore, your Messenger chats. That's probably why it is apparently developing a way to securely lock your chats, using your face as the key.

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Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker premieres in theaters next week, and with a property as big as Star Wars, there are bound to be plenty of tie-ins. Today, Facebook announced one such tie-in for Messenger, which will be outfitted with a number of limited-time features for The Rise of Skywalker. New features include Star Wars-themed stickers, reactions, and even AR effects.

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Facebook is launching a new payment service, Facebook Pay, that spans not only the social network itself but Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp. While each of those services already supports payments, the company is tying them together so that users will only have to enter details once if they prefer - though there's an upside for Facebook, too.

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A potential new Snapchat alternative app "Threads" was tipped in-the-making at Facebook and Instagram. The app seems to be part of Mark Zuckerberg's vision for a private messaging tie between each of the company's main social ecosystems. That'd likely include account connections between Facebook and Instagram, but mention of WhatsApp integration was notably absent from report details.

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Back in 2016, Facebook rolled out an initiative called "Instant Games," which found some success when they were integrated within Messenger. These games allowed you start matches with other people and compete for high scores in your group chats, and some of them were actually pretty good. In its quest to make Messenger more lightweight, though, Instant Games are about to move house, and those who enjoy playing them are probably going to encounter some frustration as that happens.

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Given the growing number of young users on the Internet, that has also been a rise in apps that cater specifically to this young audience. Those range from educational or entertainment apps to parental control apps. Those, of course, have to take great care in making sure the young ones don't get exposed to harmful content. Unfortunately, just like in any other piece of software, those apps can have bugs and one found in Facebook's Messenger Kids app practically bypassed all the protection that the app promised.

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A common misconception: "Internet security isn’t important, I’ve got nothing to hide anyway." Your conversations may be trivial for now, but you never know when you and your friends or colleagues discuss matters that could be of value to someone else who shouldn’t be eavesdropping.

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Facebook Messenger is getting a desktop app for Mac and Windows, addressing one of the biggest complaints about the IM platform, as the company meshes its three messaging services. Announced at F8 2019, the social networking company's developer focused event, today, the new app will bring Facebook's newest version of Messenger to a standalone app, rather than forcing desktop users to access it in the browser.

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Last month, Facebook released a dark mode for Messenger, but users had to unlock it through an Easter Egg involving the crescent moon emoji. Anyone who missed the news wouldn't have known the dark interface was an option, but that changes today with the universal launch of this frequently requested feature. Facebook Messenger users can now directly enable dark mode, no emojis necessary.

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Way back in 2011, Facebook rolled out a standalone app for Messenger, though it still continued letting people chat in the main Facebook app for some time after that. Then, in 2014, it removed messaging functionality from the main Facebook app, prompting people looking to chat it up to install Messenger and use that instead. Now, all these years later, it looks like Facebook is getting ready to integrate the two once more.

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Facebook has pushed out a Messenger update that makes it easier to keep track of the messages each user is responding to. The new ability essentially brings threaded messages to the chatting app, which in this case means replies that quote and respond directly to a previous message. These direct replies support GIFs, emoji, images, and other media in addition to text.

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Today a new program from Facebook was released in order to combat the sharing of intimate images without shared consent. This is sometimes referred to as "revenge porn" and it's become a major problem across all forms of social media in the past half-decade. Today Facebook's pilot program revealed over a year and a half ago live in a new security-aimed hub called "Not without my consent."

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