First and foremost, I’ll get this out of the way: I abhor all commercial social media. I don’t trust them, I know users are the product, and - ultimately, I feel they’re nothing but a cancer on society.

But, I also have to acknowledge that, for one or two use cases at least, they seem pretty unavoidable.

For me, that one use case is Facebook Marketplace. Here in Australia, there’s simply no better alternative if you want to reach a large number of potentially interested buyers (or even buy some stuff yourself). The supermarket noticeboard is no more; the Trading Post was bought long ago and died on the vine; and Gumtree has devolved into a cesspool of nothing but scammers and fuckwits.

So, I use FB Marketplace. My FB account isn’t in my name, uses a throwaway email address, and has no followers or friends. It’s only a member of the local buy/sell groups that I’m interested in, and it performs no “social” activities (posts, likes, etc) at all.

Until now, I generally only use FB marketplace with a “clean”, dedicated browser on my computer, running in private mode and via a VPN. But, it means I frequently miss messages from interested parties when I’m away from my computer.

I also sometimes use the mbasic.facebook.com site from a private Firefox tab on my iPhone, but FB has just started telling me I need to use Chrome (no. fucking. way.) or Safari (maaaaaybeeeee?) after October 28th.

When I was on Android, there were a few wrapper apps that I was able to use but, so far, my searches for an equivalent on iOS have turned up nothing.

So, knowing full well this may lead to nowhere, I thought I’d ask this community: does anyone have a good, privacy-friendly way to use FB on iOS?

Thanks in advance for any useful tips or suggestions.

  • cRazi_man@lemm.eeEnglish
    4·
    17 days ago

    I don’t know anything about iOS, but I use FB on Android for the marketplace. I keep a prepaid sim card for giving a phone number to accounts like this. I throw away the sim every few years and burn the accounts and make new ones. FB is used from a browser in a seperate work profile on the phone to keep it isolated.

    This sub obviously has a strong reaction against FB. But if you need to use it then put up what defended you can and go for it.

    • DeltaTangoLima@reddrefuge.comOPEnglish
      3·
      17 days ago

      This sub obviously has a strong reaction against FB

      Yeah - I feel like my efforts kinda got missed, where I make it obvious how much I hate having to do this, but really have no choice for my stated purpose.

      But if you need to use it then put up what defended you can and go for it

      Yep - that’s the idea. I’m realistic about what can and can’t be achieved, but I’ve only been back on iOS for a few months, so was hoping someone here was aware of a way I could get close to achieving what I want, without having carry a second phone with an alternative OS (which would be just ridiculous for this one purpose).