1896361 - www.facebook.com - Missing video and audio call buttons in encrypted chat

Status: NEW

(Web Compatibility :: Site Reports, defect, P1)

Description

[Dennis Schubert [:denschub]]

Environment:
Operating system: Windows 10
Firefox version: Firefox 121.0

Steps to reproduce:
Firefox 121 Desktop Windows 11: In encrypted Facebook Messenger chats at https://www.facebook.com/messages/e2ee/t/ the phone and video call buttons are missing, see image below.
In non-encrypted Messenger chats such as group chats located at https://www.facebook.com/messages/t/ the phone and video call buttons are still present. I have not tested to see if the buttons actually work.

Firefox 121 Mobile Android 13: While in desktop site mode, in encrypted Facebook Messenger chats at https://www.facebook.com/messages/e2ee/t/ the phone and video call buttons are missing.
In non-encrypted Messenger chats such as group chats located at https://www.facebook.com/messages/t/ the phone and video call buttons are still present. I have not tested to see if the buttons actually work.

Chrome 120 Desktop Windows 11: In both encrypted and non-encrypted Facebook Messenger chats at https://www.facebook.com/messages/e2ee/t/ and https://www.facebook.com/messages/t/ the phone and video call buttons are there. I have not tested to see if the buttons actually work.

Actual Behavior:
Facebook Messenger encrypted chats do not allow voice or video calling on desktop and mobile Firefox

Notes:

• Reproduces regardless of the status of ETP
• Reproduces in Firefox Nightly, Firefox Release
• Does not reproduce in Chrome

Created from https://github.com/webcompat/web-bugs/issues/131826

Comment 1

[Dennis Schubert [:denschub]]

I've sent them a message and asked for details, but I'm leaving this in needs-diagnosis so we can have a look, too.

Comment 2

[James Heppell [:FormularSumo]]

From my testing Messenger now shows a greyed out call icons for end-to-end encrypted chats on Firefox with a message saying "Video Calls are not supported on this browser"

Additionally, their help articles no longer list Firefox as a supported browser (I'm pretty sure they used to)
https://www.facebook.com/help/messenger-app/2322144494758524?cms_platform=www&helpref=platform_switcher
https://www.facebook.com/help/211644178877843/?helpref=faq_content

So it seems like this is an intentional change on behalf on Facebook :/

Comment 3

[James Heppell [:FormularSumo]]

Attachment: Greyed out call buttons in E2EE chats

Comment 4

[J. Bumblebee Extraordinaire]

Can we bypass this by tricking Facebook/Messenger into thinking we're using Chrome/Chromium, by using spoofing the user agent?

Comment 5

[Jim Mathies [:jimm]]

They have a page on this -
https://www.facebook.com/help/messenger-app/597429858389632

But they don't provide detail. Spoofing Chrome didn't help. Possibly due to the use of non-standard createEncodedStreams. (https://blog.mozilla.org/webrtc/end-to-end-encrypt-webrtc-in-all-browsers/)

Comment 6

[Jan-Ivar Bruaroey [:jib] (needinfo? me)]

https://blog.mozilla.org/webrtc/end-to-end-encrypt-webrtc-in-all-browsers/ should contain all the information facebook needs (including a shim) to support Firefox and Safari.

Comment 8

[Thomas Collin]

Since a few days the phone and video call buttons are now there. In my case the defect lasted about 10 days.

Comment 9

[James Heppell [:FormularSumo]]

I'm still getting the greyed out buttons and "calling not supported using this browser" on Firefox as before

Comment 10

[Pranav bhattarai]

It affects a lot of people as discussed here https://support.mozilla.org/tn/questions/1449261

Hope this get resolved soon.

Comment 11

[Masa Péter]

It has been a year since this started, and it seems facebook is entirely unwilling to switch to using the standardized API mentioned in the article above. Multiple friends have asked me why cant they do messenger calls in Firefox, and it seems theres not much I can do other than install a chromium browser for them, or a shady unofficial electron app, if I want to keep the reach of facebook limited on their computers.

Would it be possible to implement some kind of compatibility layer to appease messenger?
You shouldnt be the ones who needs to fix the crap facebook left behind, but if they have a hidden motive behind their (in)action, and they are benefitting from it, as some in the firefox community suggests, then we can expect that they will never fix it.

I, and a few others caring to dig to the bottom of this do understand that this is not the fault of Firefox, but the casual user doesnt care even if they know it. And however much we may want, we cant just tell them and their families to use a different chat service, even after all the other problems this one is burdened with.

Comment 12

[Randell Jesup [:jesup] (needinfo me)]

Tom, Jan-Ivar - per comment 6, could we do an intervention that includes the shim mentioned in Comment 6?

Comment 13

[Jan-Ivar Bruaroey [:jib] (needinfo? me)]

It's a Chrome shim letting websites (like Facebook) use RTCRtpScriptTransform in Chrome today without turning it on in chrome://flags/#enable-experimental-web-platform-features.

• With shim: https://jsfiddle.net/jib1/wx3Lczrs/143/ works in Chrome (contains minor nits to make the shim work)
• Without shim: https://jsfiddle.net/jib1/wx3Lczrs/146/ works in Chrome with Experimental WebPlatform Features turned on

I'm updating MDN to document Chrome's support.

A Firefox intervention would be based on a reverse shim, but it's currently blocked on bug 1868223 — Support [Serializable] for RTCEncodedVideoFrame and RTCEncodedAudioFrame (with .data member transfer).