
Regulate Facebook Like AIM - smacktoward
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/mb7n7v/aim-aol-instant-messenger-regulation-facebook-ending
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grandpoobah
> The FCC's decision freed other companies to build new, better instant-
> messaging apps without AOL standing in their way. And frankly, AIM wasn't
> able to keep up with them.

What am I missing here? The only other service I recall AIM having
interoperability with was ICQ. I recall MSN Messgenger tried to integrate at
one point but was blocked. What are these other better instant messaing apps
that thrived? I seem to have missed them.

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paxys
Does the author realize that Facebook already has a public API?

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untog
The Facebook API is primarily for putting things into Facebook, not taking
them out of it. For instance, you cannot (AFAIK) create a messenger client
using the public APIs.

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paxys
[https://developers.facebook.com/docs/messenger-
platform/webh...](https://developers.facebook.com/docs/messenger-
platform/webhook) and [https://developers.facebook.com/docs/messenger-
platform/refe...](https://developers.facebook.com/docs/messenger-
platform/reference/send-api) have everything you need to make a messenger
client, and there's a ton of more functionality you can add.

~~~
untog
All the documentation for that API refers to Messenger bots, not end users,
and the quick start page discusses attaching your bot to a Facebook Page.

Maybe I'm reading it wrong but this does not seem to be an API for creating
alternative chat clients.

A messages API definitely did exist years ago, but I'm pretty sure Facebook
phased it out, along with many other APIs for user data. EDIT: here it is,
deprecated:

[https://developers.facebook.com/docs/graph-
api/reference/v2....](https://developers.facebook.com/docs/graph-
api/reference/v2.10/user/inbox)

