Well, it came true for me. Facebook pushed to me the new feature of comment threads appearing in a chat box.

I hate the chat box on Facebook. I keep an open tab for messages for ongoing conversations specifically because that seems to suppress the chat box. I do not mind the notifications at the top right, but ruining screen real estate by blocking what I am reading that makes me have to close the box in order to finish? No thanks. That is an unnecessary interruption to what I was doing. It makes me more likely to ignore the message because I am determined to finish what I was doing.

The comments chat box keeps a count of how many unread have come through it. So, basically, in the top right I get a notification AND a second notification at the bottom for the. Same. Exact. Thing. Fortunately, it does appear if I check the chat box comments, then they simultaneously disappear from the top. But, if I make the mistake of checking new comments via the top in a new tab as is my normal operation, then I still have to read them in the chat box. Closing the chat box does not clear the unread.

Even when I have closed all the conversations, if I navigate to another page, then it returns and I have to close the open one just to be able to read the page. Again, my normal method of reading is to open notifications in new tabs. Then close the tab when I have consumed the new content. That basically opens a bunch of these chat boxes I have to close. Essentially, Facebook only wants us reading comments in these chat boxes and not by opening new tabs.

There is a “Hide this tab” option which asks if I want to also disable notifications for that post. I was initially confused and hit disable which means I no longer get anything about that conversation. I now hit keep. That does get me back to where I want to be with only having the single notification for comments. But, only for posts I have already handled. I will have to go through this process again for every single conversation on Facebook which is ridiculous. I may have to just not comment on anything new or post anything else until I have a permanent fix. OK, that is hyperbolic, but I will limit engagements with others until it is solved.

I tried to disable this new feature in the user interface, but naturally Facebook is on to us and did not provide a way to do so. They want us to have to become used to it before we are given the ability to restore our now bad habits. People turned off chat back when they introduced it. The help page on it is full of people complaining about this new feature.

F.B.Purity has not yet caught up to this feature. The “Hide Chat Box” gets rid of the Messenger box not the comment one.