A few users reported not seeing messages from friends that were erroneously filtered to the “other” folder for up to 3 years.
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“We truly want to make Messenger the place where you can find and privately connect with anyone you need to reach, but only be reached by the people you want to communicate with”, Marcus wrote on his Facebook page.
We have to admit that, over time, that little junk folder named “other” has been filled with different things that we want to forget: requests from persons you don’t even know, spam messages that advertise certain “products” and love letters from you friendly neighborhood stalker.
The replacement of the “Other” inbox is just one of the many changes that Facebook is working on. If the recipient chooses to respond to the message, the chat is moved to the main messages folder.
Users now only need to register with Facebook Messenger with a genuine mobile phone number – similar to the sign-up process pioneered by WhatsApp. Now all you need to initiate a conversation is a name and you can hunt for the person and send a message by typing their name directly.
Facebook software engineer Louis Boval said: “With Messenger, we’ve been focused on creating the best messaging experience possible by giving people a fun and easy way to connect and express themselves with friends and contacts”. “Some people keep doing the same things over and over again that we’ve asked them not to because the messages we send go into their “others” inbox that they don’t check”.
Among the chief concerns is that harassment and spam messages will be more visible.
Users who receive Message Requests will be able to accept or ignore new requests “without the requester knowing you’ve read their message”, Marcus noted. This controversial (and cleverly hidden) folder/filtering capability went live on Facebook in a 2010 update to Facebook Messenger. All other messages will be a message request.
Facebook users who run groups are also affected as they often communicate with group members who are not friends. After all, this is more traffic we can demonstrate to our advertisers.
This caused even more negative reaction across the web partially because it was a horribly designed filtering system and maybe even more so because it was touted by Facebook as an “update and a test” in a company blog post discussing the filtering options and new great ways (read: money) to bypass the “other” folder.
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I do use Facebook. I think Facebook isn’t safe.
