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Comment by Tepix | Hacker News Reader

Tell your non-it friends to uninstall the facebook app and use the web browser interface instead if they want to stay on facebook.

Preferably they also block all 3rd party cookies, use an ad-blocker and occasionally delete all cookies and reset their Ad-Id.

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https://m.facebookcorewwwi.onion

Use facebook over tor.

Also check out Richard Stallman's recommendation on using facebook for organizations:

https://stallman.org/facebook-presence.html

RMS’s recommendations are actually surprisingly reasonable and a more nuanced take than I was expecting. I think it’s a pretty realistic thing for many organizations to do.

For sure. He is pretty reasonable guy. Just over a decade ago I have CS friends who make fun of him for his appearances. Now at least I think what he talked regarding Free/ Or at the very least Open Source software is prophetic for that time.

Since mobile browsers now support native notifications and Facebook's website supports browser notifications, you can get most of the benefits of having a Facebook app without actually having to have one (inc. reduced battery drain, reduced privacy invasion, and so on).

My current setup is Facebook.com notifications via Chrome [Android] browser and Messenger Lite. It is still spying on me but the impact is substantially diminished.

I replaced Messenger Lite with Disa which is a (when's the last time you heard this) multi-protocol instant messenger platform. Works pretty well for those of my friend who can't get off messenger.

I've told my parents multiple times that the Facebook Android app is likely what's causing it to get warm, crash and run slow, and to uninstall it. I get a blank stare every time. You can lead a horse to water...!

Is there an alternative to the Messenger app? I've been unable to convince some friends to move off of this.

m.basic.facebook.com used to allow you to use Messenger (although not a rich experience). However, Facebook and been closing access to messaging outside of the app for awhile now.

I've had some success getting friends and family to install Signal.

You can chat and browse on https://mbasic.facebook.com . It's html-only.

My old Andriod phone won't let me load that page. It force opens the Play Store and wants me to install messenger. So I can load Facebook through Chrome, but I can't chat to anyone.

Have you tried a different browser?

Some third party apps allow messages iirc. Of course then you need to trust the dev

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