Where things stand right now: What you’ll initially notice is the simplification of the tabs on the bottom of the screen. Already reduced to three tabs in an October 2018 update, this new update removes the Discover tab altogether, putting the focus on People and Chats. The former shows your contacts’ stories while the latter is the same basic chat list you’ve used before. The big picture: While it may seem a small change, the streamlining of the Messenger app could also be seen as another step towards putting people first as Facebook tries to undo the damage from the Cambridge Analytica debacle and Russian interference in the 2016 elections. As TechCrunch points out, it may also be a signal that Facebook is done trying to put every new tech, including AI, into a single product, and just focus on what a messaging app does best (while still trying to push Stories, for some reason).
