I dropped off Facebook long enough ago that I didn't even know this was a thing. But I cannot imagine the thought process where someone thinks that Facebook is a good wrapper around web browsing.
Multitasking on mobile OSes still sucks, to the point where an application with an embedded web browser can be nicer than trying to use the application and your actual web browser at the same time.
Oh, I get that... but in my (possibly dated) mind, Facebook is a web site, and you run your mobile browser to view it, not the other way around. I mean, this feels to me like the days when dial-up was fading, but my parents would still connect to AOL to browse the Internet.
Do you really think more people tap the Safari icon and then type "facebook.com" in the URL bar than just tap the icon for the Facebook app? I can't imagine that ratio is even remotely close to 1:1. I'd bet a good dinner than 95+% of interactions on mobile are through the app.
A mobile app of that sort is basically just a single-purpose web browser. I agree that makes it generally less capable & shittier, but most of them presumably exist to be better at the one specific task they're designed for. Guess the jury's still out on whether Facebook has achieved that. Though it's also true that their goals and the user's are often orthogonal or opposed.
Talking about android. It's never quite clear where the back button will take you (sometimes it goes back to the previous app, sometimes not), some apps (in particular the google app!) lose their state on switch, the switch process itself is fiddly.
It's never quite clear where the back button will take you
I have an Android phone where the back button is drawn on the screen, not a hardware button. Why can't it display some additional information about where it goes when I tap it?
Well, it makes a lot more sense from Facebook's perspective. They get a bit of control over people's browsing habits and most importantly, tons of browsing and behavioral data.
