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Forced to use Facebook to interact with local groups and businesses. How do I keep my data safe? (self.asklemmy)

submitted 3 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) by christov to c/[email protected]

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I'm a big advocate for data privacy and I left Facebook many years ago without feeling the need to go back. However, there's several local groups and a couple of local businesses that specifically communicate via Facebook that I'd like to interact with.

This presents a problem - I have to use the platform to interact with these people but I don't want to use the platform. So how do I keep my data safe from Zucks greedy hands? So far I'm thinking:

use a throwaway email or email that is specifically for fb
only access via Firefox inprivate browser and use addons to clean cookies after every session
utilise ad blockers in said browser
set fb privacy settings accordingly to opt out of ad personalisation, othrr site fb logins etc
potentially only access via VPN but that might be cumbersome
maybe do all of this via android work profile but not sure if that's much benefit

Anything else I can do to remain reasonably safe?

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Tell those local businesses that you really want to support and follow them, but that you boycott Meta and the reasons that you do.

Honestly there's so many reasons businesses should also avoid Meta, like the fact Meta is literally collecting and selling their most valuable business data about their customers to other competing businesses. Tell them for their own good that Meta is not their friend, it might help them at first to get exposure, but only long enough to get that data and sell it off to a bigger fish.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

To add to it,

Not META, but there are videos of small business owners explaining how amazon used their data to set up its own thing as their direct rivals, then manipulated their ratings, virtually stealing their clients too.

Tell them that selling their data to thurd parties is one of the biggest revenue streams of META, that you are NOT ok exposing your own business to such risks and that as a serious business, they should be wary of giving data to data selling / leasing social networks as well.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago

Some friends had to restart their business because their only online presence was on Instagram and their account got banned. So all their sales dropped to almost 0 overnight

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago

Yup. Now I also get that exposure and engagement are important to small businesses, but to that end they shouldn't lock themselves to one place either. Point out the benefits of more open solutions like Bluesky and Mastodon, and the benefits of setting up their own hosted site/blog that they can then broadcast on social media but slowly cut them out as a middle man by pushing customers to their site directly.

And most certainly businesses should never use the "algorithm" on social media to collect data or get "free" advertising such as those "like/repost to win" style posts. Those are not free advertising, those are doing free data collection work for Meta.