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Comment by cylinder | Hacker News Reader

Why do people keep the Facebook app installed? I use it in the web browser and it works just fine, while sort of sandboxing it within Chrome.

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Especially after that incident where the Facebook app intentionally changed the email address of contacts in your phone to use Facebook.com email addresses instead of their real ones. All Facebook apps have been banned from all my devices since then.

Because my phone wont let me uninstall it [0] and it's not just on my specific phone, other manufacturers do the same. I also cannot uninstall Amazon or the 5 other completely useless apps it brings, Facebook Messenger and Instagram are ingrained into my phone which is annoying. I wish rooting and setting up a custom ROM wasn't a painful experience or I would do both, but I like getting updates, which rooting stops, and I'm not too sure a ROM supports updating properly.

[0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/androidapps/comments/3catb0/i_cant_...

Which is why root is important...

Top 3 reasons: removing "crap", backing up crap and real adblocking.

Have you tried disabling the apps instead of uninstalling them?

I've had good luck with this on stock roms when you can't uninstall the carrier's apps. Settings » Apps » All » Application Name » Disable

Technically the app is still there, but it can't be launched and doesn't appear in the list of apps.

Maybe they haven't heard of Tinfoil, a wrapper around the FB mobile site.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.danvelazco...

Ditto. You can even get notifications from Chrome, and the facebook website supports it. Chat is by far the biggest hassle, but I'm willing to pay the price. I see the slightly degraded experience as a good incentive to not go on Facebook as often.

Because "people" aren't even aware that this stuff can happen. I actually think it's far more likely that in this situation the other person did a search, but most people wouldn't even consider that a simple search could result in you ending up on a "People You May Know" list.

TL;DR: people don't know because they aren't savvy, and that isn't their fault. Those of us who do know should do a better job, but no, I have no ideas how either.

On iOS you can simply not grant it contacts, microphone, or location access.

This should also be true for android as of version 6. I haven't tried installing the facebook app to make extra sure, but I get to choose with every other app I use.

I've observed usually around the release of creepy features, that they update the mobile website and fubar it in the process.

I think that the mobile site is the lowest priority interface.

I actually tried this on iOS a few months ago. The experience was far worse -- felt slower, less responsive, harder to navigate -- so I re-installed the app.

On the flip-side, (again, anecdotal sample-size-1) I've noticed a definite improvement in battery life after uninstalling the app, and I definitely don't needs any of Facebook's notifications to propagate through via the app.

My Facebook experience is not very involved. I just scroll through the news feed, look at some photos/comments. Works fine for me, but if you are a heavier user, the app will of course be more fluid.

It performs a bit better. It can fit better on a small screen without the browser chrome. It handles loss of connection a lot better.

If so, that's recent. I uninstalled the app solely because the web version was much faster for me.

That's the opposite of my experience when I was using Facebook(a year ago). The app was awful, crashed regularly, and was much slower retrieving data. The mobile version was a much smoother experience.

And it's only getting better now with PWA features

Notifications, chat bubbles etc.

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