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Comment by arthurezende | Hacker News Reader

It's almost impossible to use social networks on mobile without installing their apps

When I got a new phone about a year ago, I decided that I wouldn't be installing any traditional social media apps (Tusky doesn't count) and that I'd use the web when "necessary". This has been a very successful experiment and resulted in me looking at Instagram _maybe_ once per week.

It's impossible for me to use YouTube with the app. Safari + uBlock origin lite and I never see an ad.

DuckDuckGo app and "Duck Player" deletes the ads.

Yes we're solving an app problem with another app, but just highlighting that is a solution for the ads.

Most YouTubers still have sponsor sections on their videos so you probably do see some ads. Also why not pay for YouTube premium to remove the ads while still supporting the creators?

If you want to support the creators is through affiliate marketing by buying whatever they're selling, or by subscribing to them on Patreon – they earn next to nothing from YouTube.

SponsorBlock is the answer to that.

They artificially lock it down, because the app will give them more data to collect than the web app plus a larger surface to annoy the user with notifications, widgets, and other advertisement.

I just finished making a social application (for skateboarding) with the express intent of making it fully featured/pleasant to use on mobile simply as web app, without login or installation.

Web is such a powerful platform and so many people still treat their web applications like they're just interactive documents. I think the most bothersome thing on mobile web is if an application has shifting framing ("chrome") when you pan around, like you're looking at a PDF.

https://skatanica.com

Let me know, but I developed it almost entirely focused on iPhone SE as a target to give myself the most claustrophobic possible experience, and I think that helped guide a lot of the decisions.

Didn't use to be. I stopped using facebook shortly after they blocked messenger on their webpage, so jokes on them I guess.

I wish Messenger had an auto-reply feature: "I probably won't see your message for a while because I don't install Meta apps on my phone"

That function is called the delete account button. When someone can't message you with Facebook Messenger, they use something else.

When I rejoined X at the start of this year I consciously decided not to install the app on my phone. It's addicting enough in the web browser on my laptop.

So I have zero social media networks on my phone and, looking at everyone around me who does, I'm very pleased with this decision.

X won't even let me register an account without downloading the stupid app. Then I download it and it just says something isn't right and refuses to let me register the account anyway. Probably thinks I'm a bot.

It's probably better this way. Hopefully bots will kill off social media before even more countries decide to ban it.

The X PWA is very good on both desktop and mobile. I prefer it to the Android app.

I found that installing facebook dot com to my Home Screen on iOS works acceptably. Lets me check in on things every now and then and still be confident they’re very limited in what they can track.

Messenger doesn’t work but luckily I rarely if ever use it.

Even more of a reason to get off them

They're digital drugs

If you don't install it they keep you from spending time on them. It's a feature, not a bug.

Not to mention the battery savings when nothing pulls those "engagement" posts in the background...

you can with liberedirect or ublock origin and firefox for android.

So there's 2 reasons to not install apps

Bug or feature?

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