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Comment by kevin_thibedeau | Hacker News Reader

Stop using their free service and block their Javascript. Don't use apps built with their login framework.

The problem is facebook is wiping out the alternatives. In Australia there is a decent buy/sell site called Gumtree but its ultimately doomed as facebook marketplace uses its massive pre exsting userbase to wipe it out.

Facebook either buys or crushes all competition which doesn't have billions of dollars to push back.

Humanity got by without Facebook alternatives 20 years ago. You'll be fine.

Of course I won't cease functioning without being able to buy and sell furniture but my life will be worse off than before.

Since the function of the government should be ensuring the best outcome for the majority of the population and what facebook does makes things worse for the majority, it makes sense to take action here.

Not sure of the future of Gumtree in Australia, but they also have a large tech company behind them (at least until next year). eBay Classifieds Group

And what about their tracking through a huge chunk of popular websites? Shadow profiles and all kinds of shadey stuff.

Install the uMatrix extension. Blacklist anything from facebook.com and fb.com.

Now their tracking pixels can't see you.

Just in case you weren't aware, uMatrix has been deprecated and will receive no further development, including fixes. It still runs fine now, but it may not in the future.

Thank you! I was not. The GitHub repo has indeed been archived.[1]

Any ideas where to go for similar functionality that will be supported in the future?

[1] https://github.com/gorhill/uMatrix

There seem to be several forks, although it doesn't look like there's much consolidation on merging PRs into any specific repo. Hopefully they don't just splinter off and end up fragmented and neglected. :-\

https://github.com/gorhill/uMatrix/network

uBlock Origin in advanced mode is gorhill's suggested replacement. If you have never used uMatrix before most likely uBlock Origin is what you should be using, and can easily accomplish the "globally block facebook domains" either via blocklists or manually via the advanced mode.

Blocking domains works right now but what if Facebook register a new domain? Or a thousand new domains? Or they proxy traffic through a site owner's domain? What's needed is a way to block Facebook's privacy invasion regardless of the tech they use. That is unlikely to be a problem solved by tech. It needs enough people, including governments, to tell Facebook they're unhappy with Facebook's activity.

As far as the cross-site tracking goes, they'd actually need to get all the other websites to update the facebook JS code they include, and it would only work until the tracking blockers updated their lists again.

I agree that tech is the wrong place to be solving this problem, but it can work in a rather cludgy way.

This argument is so tiresome. It isn’t a radicle idea that people should be able to engage in basic actives like transportation, commerce, communication, etc. without having to give up their rights to safety, privacy, and other basic standards. “If you don’t want to risk getting poisoned, just don’t shop at that multination store”. How about any store should be regulated to provide a minimum level of safety in the things they sell. How about any communication platform be regulated to provide a minimum level of privacy and data protection for private user information.

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