I wonder if they have any flood protection...

Also HTTPS packets should be quite safe.

It'd be more interesting if this was done over Google's chat, since Chrome trusts the Google Internet Authority cert...

What makes this interesting is the fact that Facebook chat traffic is subsidized by Facebook and free of charge in some countries as part of their anti-net-neutrality "Internet.org" initiative. This project allows you to hijack the Facebook subsidy for purposes they didn't intend. Of course, if it becomes popular then Facebook will have to block it, emphasizing the self-serving commercial nature of the subsidy.

Here's one telecom's implementation of this proprietary Internet.org app showing free tier fb/messenger the photos are still displayed just obscured until you pay for a data plan (notice it uses free.facebook.com which is complicit in enforcing this. https://youtu.be/sUGZdFXs22o?t=2m16s

Guess no embedding creative commons university pdfs in wall posts.

Internet.org might not be net neutral, but that doesn't make it bad. Much of the world isn't the US, and differently structured markets need to be considered differently.

So if you are in an impoverished area your packets are different from first world packets, magically making it harder to send them to 207.241.224.2 (archive.org) than 173.252.120.6 (facebook.com)?

No, that is not the case. Instead, Facebook will pay for you to get Internet if that is Internet that only lets you access Facebook. And that is not an Internet at all. The infrastructure, the physical reality, means that if you have any connection, you can have all connections, and in these circumstances only profit hungry greedy monsters would consider effectively blacklisting every site but their own to guarantee them revenues to show to shareholders for providing network connectivity to you - or I guess it should be more appropriately called Facebook connectivity.

They're not blacklisting anything.

The only bad thing they do is call it "internet". It's not internet access. Free access to things like wikipedia is a good thing, as long as it's not taking money away from actual free internet initiatives.

Price gouging actual internet access would also be bad, but that would be someone else doing it, and I don't think it's happening here.

I think that internet access to a site like Wikipedia is incredibly valuable to those with no internet access.

If Facebook wants to pay for that, and the cost is that they also get access to Facebook then my view is that is a net good.

I didn't know that infrastructure was free to build and maintain. I wonder why WorldCom and Global crossing went bankrupt, if they had no expenses.

Did you know that yombinator.com o ly allows you to transmit comments on HackerNews posts, subject to heavy moderstion, not free and open internet speech?