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

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[–] Kirk@startrek.website 1 points 1 month ago

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!

[–] xtr0n@sh.itjust.works 0 points 1 month ago (1 children)

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.

[–] flynnguy@programming.dev 0 points 1 month ago (1 children)

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.

[–] tiramichu@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

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.