Q: Messages - Facebook ID numbers instead of Names

Thank you, especially since I understand you don't have a Facebook account.

So I suppose there is no way to fix this. Rather frustrating.

In my case, sometimes I see Facebook contacts in numerical form and sometime the nicknames are displayed for the same contact. I suppose it partially depends on whether they are accessing the account on their side from a PC or mobile device, from the web or from an app.

I don't use ichat or osx, but I've been seeing this too on various other instant messaging applications (pidgin, gajim, empathy/telepathy), so definitely seems to be something on facebook's end. Pretty ridiculous that facebook is doing nothing at all about this.

Strangley enough trillian pro on my gaming desktop (windows 7) seems to be the only chat application I've seen that isn't effected by this. I have it open all the time and the contact list never shows numbers like all these other apps are doing. No idea what it could possibly be doing different :/ I think trillian has an OSX version, so mabye people could try using that as a workaround for the issue.

I think it's a little more ridiculous that people assume it's Facebook. It seems more likely to be the Jabber protocol.

Never jump to a conclusion until you have some foundation.

I've got no problems at all with google talk which also uses jabber/xmpp. Its ONLY facebook that is doing this, there's obviously something that is broken on their end.

Jabber not working properly doesn't make it immediately broken all around. Not sure why you'd assume that.

I'm not any less "jumping to the conclusion" than you are... Where are you getting the idea that it is jabber at fault? Where is your 'foundation'? Other services that uses jabber are working fine, its only facebook having this problem. It certainly does not seem "more likely" that it is jabber causing the issue...

Sure there could be a chance that it is not facebook at fault, but based on the evidence so far, it seems highly unlikely. And it should also be noted that random issues like this with facebook's xmpp servers are pretty par for the course, this is not the first time facebook has had issues like this on their end. Facebook's xmpp chat has always been far less reliable than google's in my experience.

I'm not sure if this is a permanent fix, but on my iPhone I updated my facebook contacts (settings>facebook>update all contacts) and within a minute or two both chat clients (Adium and Messages/iChat) displayed my contact names instead of Jabber ID's.  I'll leave it to you and others to reason as to why this worked.

Earlier on, someone mentioned

Forcibly adding the contact name to your local contact list seems to prevent reversion of that particular contact to Facebook contact ID number

So I would assume this is what's happening; your contacts are being updated with Facebook IDs.

Hi,

An interesting thought.

Against.

1) It does not happen to my Google Mail ID (Google run a Jabber server)

2) It does not happen to my Jabber Me. account.

3) Nor my Jabber.org account.

4) nor my redhotChillipepper one.  (I use this one so infrequently I probably have the name wrong but you get the picture)

For.

1) Facebook's own document that states it's anon standard implementation.

To Quote

Limitations

Facebook Chat should be compatible with every XMPP client, but is not a full XMPP server. It should be thought of as a proxy into the world of Facebook Chat on www.facebook.com. As a result, it has several behaviours that differ slightly from what you would expect from a traditional XMPP service:

• Your client cannot send or receive HTML messages
• Because roster items and presence subscriptions are based on the user's Facebook friends, they cannot be created or deleted using the standard XMPP mechanisms.
• Facebook Chat is terse when sending updates for new friends, because the negotiation happens outside of XMPP. Future versions of Facebook Chat may be more conformant.
• The user's own Jabber ID (JID) is different from the Jabber ID that their contacts will see because the translation is done internally.
• Arbitrary IQ stanzas cannot be passed between clients.
• Presence probes do not currently work.
• Non-SASL authentication with the jabber:iq:auth namespace as described in XEP-0078 is not currently supported.
• The XML parser does not yet fully handle XML namespaces. Please stick to the same style as the examples in XMPP RFCs  3920 and 3921 when using XML namespaces.

As you can see from the items I have Highlighted there are several potentional issue arround the Names and Jabber ID.

The line about future versions possibly being more conformant may be the key to this.

The Jabber ID (JID) which is issued by a Jabber server is not normally changed in to anything else by the server in question.

Some do make use of Address Cards  and Nicknames that can supply the Buddies that see on line with extra info  (most of which Messages and iChat don't even look for) but they do need to be features that are "turned On" for that particular server.

In this document Facebook seem to be saying they will broadcast something that they call your Jabber ID  that is not the JID in XMPP terms.

8:34 PM      Wednesday; August 14, 2013

  iMac 2.5Ghz 5i 2011 (Mountain Lion 10.8.4)
 G4/1GhzDual MDD (Leopard 10.5.8)
 MacBookPro 2Gb (Snow Leopard 10.6.8)
 Mac OS X (10.6.8),
 Couple of iPhones and an iPad

"Limit the Logs to the Bits above Binary Images."  No, Seriously

As always, Ralph, you are adding very helpful support  and actual technical information to this very puzzling problem.  It seems everyone is confused by this, and your help is very much appreciated.  It's such a pleasure to see such a knowledgeable person being informational, and polite, instead of disparaging others trying to help.

By the way, I have a FB account, and I do not have this problem, so it is not universal.

HI ~Bee,

Would that (Your last line) have anything to do with the way you sync your Contacts List ?

https://discussions.apple.com/message/22728359#22728359

8:56 PM      Wednesday; August 14, 2013

  iMac 2.5Ghz 5i 2011 (Mountain Lion 10.8.4)
 G4/1GhzDual MDD (Leopard 10.5.8)
 MacBookPro 2Gb (Snow Leopard 10.6.8)
 Mac OS X (10.6.8),
 Couple of iPhones and an iPad

"Limit the Logs to the Bits above Binary Images."  No, Seriously

That didn't work for me.

Here is an official bug report to Facebook. They've marked it as low priority.

https://developers.facebook.com/bugs/495137163913432

This thread from Pidgin also gives some information:

https://developer.pidgin.im/ticket/15706

Oops, I forgot to include this link in my last post, but for now we can at least report the issue to Facebook as a complaint here:

https://www.facebook.com/help/contact/177126135725341