Of course, some of the blame for that belongs with Google, for failing to accurately describe the permissions being given to apps.
> Continuously upload info about your contacts like phone numbers and nicknames, and your call and text history. This lets friends find each other on Facebook and helps us create a better experience for everyone.
https://fbnewsroomus.files.wordpress.com/2018/03/opt-in_scre...
Granted, those six words are tacked on the end of a sentence, and given the intrusiveness of the feature should probably have been called out in its own opt-in dialog with its own switch. But it's not like they asked for contact access and turned around and used it for something else.
Has that prompt always been there? A lot of people seem to be unaware that Facebook has been doing this, and I haven't seen anyone say they saw that prompt in 2015.
I searched Google for the text of that prompt, or any reference to Facebook accessing your SMS history, in 2014 to 2017, and didn't find anything.