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.
Hey mate, fellow Aussie here in almost identical situation, minus the “anonymous” Facebook account. I have one from decades ago in my real name that I haven’t used except for 2 Marketplace purchases in the last 15 years. I’ve tried creating new accounts in fake names, on public Wi-Fi with no luck. In one case the account was flagged for review and never approved, and in the other I was suspended until I would upload a selfie (how about no?). Do you have any tips on how you established a ghost account in the first place?
Not that it works with Facebook (I haven't tried), but just want to drop a useful site for fake selfies.
https://this-person-does-not-exist.com/
Honestly, I'm using an old gag FB account I created back in 2011. I guess that was well before they started asking people to verify with selfies and phone numbers.