Word has it that face scanning will soon be necessary to do anything at all on FB and IG (including deleting your account) so I’m in the process of taking care of that business now and trying to encourage the few friends I’m still in touch with to do the same.
Unfortunately, without an account you can’t access content, and there are still numerous local businesses and organizations posting at FB and IG and I can’t really expect that to change anytime soon. But it would definitely help sell the idea of giving them up if I can offer another way of seeing posts on those sites.
With IG, there is https://imginn.com/ which I’ve been using for a time, it seems to work well enough to show an account’s IG posts.
What I really need is something like that for FB. I don’t really need to see posts from individual accounts as I don’t even think my friends post on FB anymore; I really just want to be able to see “Liked Pages” as those are often regional businesses and communities. Being able to see groups would also be helpful but those often require special permission even when you do have an FB account so I don’t expect much there.
Thanx
I mean, if you have any pictures of you at all on fb that you or others took, they have your face for their AI facial recognition surveillance.
I’m only there for marketplace.
“I’m cutting it entirely”, “how can I see it’s content”
Clearly you’re not ot cutting it entirely, as you immediately after declaring you quit smoking bought another pack.
Just leave those platforms. Screw it’s brain rot content. Don’t open links from friends to there anymore. Just live a better life without all the junk there, plus without the junk on YouTube shorts and tiktok. Trust me, your life gets better without it.
OP isn’t asking about how to keep viewing shorts or memes from friends.
Many businesses forgo websites and put their contacts, opening hours, menus, and updates on a dedicated Facebook page. Is that small business open on Sundays? Google says yes, but Facebook has a post from the owner about their dog dying so the store is closed for the week.
I am part of several social groups that communicate entirely through Facebook. There is no way to get updates out to all members outside of the dedicated group pages. A venue change a few months back caused chaos because some people didn’t check the Facebook group in the week leading up to the event.
I too want to leave Facebook, and have stripped my use down to these minor use cases. But getting rid of it completely at this point cuts me off from some of my only positive mental health activities.
If a business stops using a website but uses Facebook (or similar platforms) instead, they will miss me as a customer. If their customer service is only on social media, they will miss me as a customer. Fuck them, I don’t want to be forced onto certain platforms to be able to contact a company or see what’s up. I’ll go to the competition, preferably a small company, which still uses a website and has a phone number with a human answering it.
This is so true. I fucking LOATHE FB but our city has a fb group on it and it’s dummy useful. I’ve tried to move them over to a hosted forum but only one person came. It’s like people are just stuck hard on FB and won’t ditch it come hell or high water.
Came here to say this. I left cold turkey almost two years ago and haven’t regretted it. I get way more value out of time spent on Mastodon and Lemmy (and I spend way less time on those platforms than I did on FB or IG). I also use Pixelfed, but most of the posts I see there are of birds, flowers, or moss so I only really go there when I want to look at pretty and relaxing things (especially on Sundays with the #silentsunday posts).
The only way to truly leave entirely is to not look back.
No one in my IRL knows what a Lemmy or a mastodon is. All they know is the tok and fb and x.
I sent them a Lemmy link once and they were all really scared it was a dark web virus. People are really stupid.
I never wss on insta and tiktok and I left Facebook 10 years ago. I spend way too much time on Lemmy, but most of my time I spend with friends or doing things I love. Fuck social media. It makes everyone miserable.
You’re talking about being fed content.
In my country, Facebook is so embedded that it’s hard to leave. All communication is on Messenger. All events are managed on Facebook.
I feel that. Here in Hawai’i a lot of our emergency services, etc. only use Twitter. Finding information can be difficult otherwise. I imagine in some places it’s basically impossible.
FB, you can use UBLOCK origin to block the login popup permanently. on this reddit post https://old.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/comments/1g3bkhy/how_to_block_facebook_login_pop_up/
I’m glad I deleted my accounts years ago. I don’t have loss aversion from leaving them. I don’t know what I’m missing, I guess, and that’s good.
I use either MeTube or https://mollygram.com/ to view IG reels my wife and friends send me. Doesn’t have full browsing though, and might not help with seeing business hours. I tend to just not do business with any place that requires an account to see their info.
More businesses need to hear people say “I don’t use Meta products “ so that they consider making critical information available elsewhere. And businesses that still use Twitter should be shunned.
Seriously. Why is it so hard to find information about restaurants on the internet? And why can’t you post your damn menu?!
This… too many small businesses use facebook as their “webpage.” I’m not creating an account, blank or otherwise, to view your hours… I probably just won’t go.
Small businesses do this because it’s free, quick to set up, and easy to maintain with no technical knowledge required.
Facebook obviously made it easy on purpose, hoping to create exactly this scenario - where half of all small-business presence is only on Facebook and if you want to see that content you need a Facebook account to do it.
I hate it passionately, but I absolutely understand how it came to be this way.
Small business owners aren’t thinking about the ideological consequences of forcing people to engage with big tech to see their site, or that they should take a stand in promoting an open and decentralised Internet. They’re just thinking “I need a web presence” and I guess I can’t blame them for that as much as I dislike it.
We could go around offering to make websites for all these small businesses.
But none of us will. Thats the only way to actually fight this.
Oh, I understand it… it’s basically free and I think they feel that advertising on facebook is good business. Facebook has just made it hard to view without an account. I think I’d have less of a problem with it if I could view the information without facebook popping up a “create an account” modal constantly, preventing me from viewing the information.
These guys not hear of yelp?
https://www.pixnoy.com/ is a good way to browse public Instagram accounts.
I was using imginn, but this is a nice one, thanks!
If a business only has some shitty Instagram or Facebook page or wants to only be contactable via WhatsApp then they don’t deserve my fucking business.
You obviously don’t live in a rural area where almost all businesses do exactly this, minus the WhatsApp part. If I had that attitude, I’d only have Walmart and nobody should live like that.
Real question, can you describe this experience more? How do businesses get locked behind Facebook?
It takes money and know-how to create and maintain a real website, but Facebook is free and requires little knowledge of how websites work. Add the fact that many rural folks still don’t take the Internet seriously, and you get businesses that don’t realize that they’re neglecting a useful tool to help them gain and maintain customers.
What I said before was a little exaggerated. An example of the experience: this weekend I was looking to order lunch in an area that I don’t frequent. There was a sandwich shop that I had been meaning to try because people rave about it. I tried to call to place an order and the phone just rang. No voicemail, just ringing. I went looking for a website, thinking maybe they’re closed on Sundays (I hear the owner is religious) and I find nothing but Facebook. The latest post was from November saying something about the owner having broken his arm, so they’ll be closed until further notice. So I guess they’re closed?
I move onto another shop who does have a website, but it’s bare bones: just the name, address, phone number, and hours that are probably outdated. No menu. Their Facebook wasn’t any help. I had to Google to find pictures of the menu. I called them and ordered. If I wasn’t willing to take an extra couple of steps, I’d have to resort to Subway for a sandwich… no thanks.
The usual experience is like what happened with the second shop, sometimes with a menu, sometimes it’s up to date. No online ordering, no Doordash. Maybe they have a new customer form to fill out to get a call back for a quote, but don’t be surprised if they don’t call, because they don’t check those messages because they don’t take the Internet seriously. They’re great at their job, but suck at current forms of communication. If you want to support local businesses in a rural area, you call them or just show up. It’s like the 2000s out here.
you call them or just show up. It’s like the 2000s out here.
TIL: I’m living in the 2000s and didn’t realize it. 😅
Yeah, this is what I do. Sometimes I show up and the place is closed. I wasted 30 minutes driving there. It’s annoying. But, not so annoying that I want to use FB. (For me personally. I understand people have different tolerances.)
I’m older, I guess, this is just what we did when we were growing up.
A bit of pain but you can still see FB, you have to hit the [x] in the top right of the login nag then it will let you scroll through several photos/posts before popping up again (wont work on the main feed page just photos/posts, not sure about liked pages). When it does pop up again it wont have the [x] so click the browsers refresh and the [x] will show up again but FB will still be on the same photo/post. Rinse, repeat.
What you’re looking for is called an “Alternative frontend”. I’m not aware of a working one for Facebook but it might be worth searching around!
Thanks for the info, I’ll keep an eye out. Knowing the term will be very helpful so thank you for that.
just delete your photos & posts and leave it idle…?
Did you read the post?
This is what I did years ago. No apps. Just a sandboxed FB browser tab so I can check the local marketplace and community groups.
Yeah, school and city use Facebook for everything so I begrudgingly keep an empty account.
Except when you log in and it tracks you across the web and when you interact with it. You’re basically always feeding the machine.
There is a ublock filter you can add to block the login page to appear if that’s what you are looking for.
Can’t add it right now, but let me know if you can’t find it and I will add it
Word has it that face scanning will soon be necessary to do anything at all on FB and IG (including deleting your account)
Any sources or links to share on this? If this is true it’d be worth it to send to friends and family who still have an account.
Not that this has ever stopped them before, but I would be interested on their attempt at remaining compliant with data protection laws as I feel like locking GDPR right to be forgotten behind a facial ID scan would be seen as an unneeded blocker in order to delete your account.
Last year, I set up an IG account to just view a family member’s posts. It required a photo of me. At first I was said, “fuck no”, but, just to see what would happen, I uploaded an image of some random face. I think it might have even been from a cartoon. It worked.
Go try to create a new FB account, that’s the source because they already do require a face scan to create a new account.
I heard about https://codeberg.org/irelephant/kittygram but never used it
