Currently, anyone with an active Facebook account also has an active Facebook Messenger. There is no option to deactivate Facebook Messenger.

I---and many people like me who don't use Facebook Messenger regularly---often do not realize that someone has written me a message until several weeks or months have passed. Facebook used to send me an email when I got a Facebook message, but they no longer do that (most of the time).

Like many other people, I don't have the Facebook Messenger app on my phone (and do not want it) and I don't visit the Facebook web site often, but I prefer to keep an active Facebook account for various non-Messenger related reasons involving events and photos, for example.

By refusing to let me deactivate Facebook Messenger (or equivalent), Facebook is allowing my friends, family, and other acquaintances to believe that they've contacted me when they in fact have not. By not allowing me to opt out, Facebook is unfairly coercing me to regularly engage with their Facebook Messenger as a condition of using the rest of their social networking site.

For reference, Twitter is far better at this: if someone sends me a Direct Message (DM) on Twitter, Twitter promptly emails me (with the full text!) to let me know. This is how it should be done, and Facebook is falling far short of their peers.

I ask Facebook to do one or more of the following options:

(1) Allow me to deactivate Facebook Messenger completely,

(2) Send me an email with the FULL MESSAGE TEXT promptly after someone sends me a message on Facebook Messenger (you used to do this!!!),

(3) As a bare(!) minimum, allow me to set an "out of office"-style auto-reply so that I can tell anyone who writes me a message how to contact me more effectively.

And while you're at it, Facebook, please clean up all of the other problems with your platform, many of which are much bigger than this one.

Thank you!