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Samsung Phone Users Perturbed to Find They Can't Delete Facebook

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Re: Samsung Phone Users Perturbed to Find They Can't Delete Facebook

#91
post #21

Says the site with ~20-30 crapware JS trackers (12 blocked by uBlock, 23 by uMatrix). I'm not forgiving FB here, just pointing out that others are often similarly bad.

Imagine the impact on energy consumption having to run these ad blockers + running the ad infrastructure. Global warming, is that you?

I looked for evidence for your claim as in my mind, energy consumption for the ad industry would not be that impressive.

I found a paper written in 2010 for the Netherlands [1], claiming that : "Thus, web advertisements increase the total energy consumption of PCs by 3.4%."

That's not counting the cost of running the infrastructure, and I suspect ads and tracking probably did not evolve in the right (i.e. less energy hungry) way in the last 9 years.

As for the current consumption of power by 'client devices', it is estimated to consume 5% of total world electricity [2]

I could not find any number on the energy consumption on the other side, i.e. servers/infras.

As a (very) rough estimation, without taking into account the 'server' side of ads, we can estimate the energy cost of ads to represent ~0.17% of total energy produced in a year.

In the end, I stand corrected : the amount of energy consumed is far from negligible at that scale. However, while it is definitely not negligible on absolute terms, I think there are lower hanging fruits to focus on to fight global warming, such as reliance on fossil fuels, common use of products made on the other side of the world, meat consumption...

[1] : https://research.utwente.nl/en/publications/the-hidden-energ... [2] : http://www.climatechangenews.com/2017/12/11/tsunami-data-con...

Re: Samsung Phone Users Perturbed to Find They Can't Delete Facebook

#92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about OnePlus?

Even though I am an extremely happy owner of a 5T, I won't buy another OnePlus device now that they have removed the headphone jack. That's the difficult part of voting with your wallet - your choices become more and more limited if the market isn't aligned with your personal preference.

Also the 5T camera is awful if you aren't using their proprietary vendor blobs. Custom ROMs like Lineage take absolutely shocking photos.

Re: Samsung Phone Users Perturbed to Find They Can't Delete Facebook

#93
post #69
post #20

It's not just FB, my Samsung S9 came preloaded with 'undeletable' Microsoft apps too. But this is nothing new, Samsung phones have came preloaded with bloat since forever. When buying a new phone I always spend some time deleting all Samsung, Microsoft, Facebook and carrier related apps. Yes, you can delete 'undeletable' apps through ADB, without rooting the device. pm uninstall -k --user 0

I never dove too deep into trying to uninstall undesirable apps from my android phones because I thought rooting a phone was necessary. But now seeing this, am curious to try it on a few old phones that i use as podcast/mp3 playing devices while mowing the lawn, etc. Thanks for sharing this!

If they are old phones anyway, you might aswell just root them.

Re: Samsung Phone Users Perturbed to Find They Can't Delete Facebook

#94
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or nuke your account. I deleted my Facebook account halfway last year. Haven't received a single e-mail since.

You can't delete accounts. Only deactivate them. But if you ever log in again it all comes back up as it was before you deactivated it, This was a huge problem for my wife because her deactivated account got hacked and then myself and all of her friends and family started getting spam.

You can delete it you just have to jump through some hoops: https://www.facebook.com/help/224562897555674/

Re: Samsung Phone Users Perturbed to Find They Can't Delete Facebook

#96

> Bloomberg spoke to a U.S. owner of a Samsung Galaxy S8 who, after reading forum discussions about Samsung devices, found his own pre-loaded Facebook app could not be removed. It could only be “disabled”, with no explanation available to him as to what exactly that meant. First thing I do when I upgrade my LG phone (I've had the LG G2, LG G5, and now the LG G7, I don't think it was preinstalled in the G2 but I can't…

The bundled crapware is the reason I switched from Samsung to OnePlus. I've actually gone one step further and run LineageOS now. I've been an Android user since the original Samsung Galaxy, but to be honest my next phone will probably be an iPhone.

> iPhone

Just make sure to break out of the jail.

Re: Samsung Phone Users Perturbed to Find They Can't Delete Facebook

#97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know I can clean up crapware, via adb, but on principle vote with my wallet. It's not acceptable to charge me something that rounds to a thousand euros and then fleece me for a few extra bucks. Right now, I restrict my selection to Android One [1] phones. The current one is a Nokia 8 Sirocco. [1] https://www.android.com/one/

What's your experience with Android One? First time I hear about it but I'm intrigued, doesn't it come from Google anyway? So the "secure" claims are kind of empty?

I'm using a Xiaomi Mi A1 for some time now and so far so good. I was looking for a pure Android experience without all the crapware and custom UI's that come from any major phone brand and this is exactly what I got.

Also, direct updates from Google for 2 years without interference from the brand (Xiaomi in this case). Which means I have security updates every month.

I'm not going to buy anything that's not an AndroidOne from now on, with the exception of a Pixel.

Re: Samsung Phone Users Perturbed to Find They Can't Delete Facebook

#98
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a setting I saw on Instagram about this where it will send you emails if you're inactive for too long. It's an entirely distinct setting from all other email spam. There was one setting on Instagram I would toggle, and come back two seconds later to find it retoggled, it was to suggest my account to other people to follow, I've managed to acquire like 20 follow requests from total strangers, I can't make it s…

I'm testing this hypothesis. I have not logged into Facebook for three months and am still getting daily emails with links to posts

If it helps, I haven't logged into FB since Jan 2018. I still get e-mails from FB about posts my friends made weeks or months ago. Never anything within the past few days though. Just now I got one for a post my friend made on Nov 28th. Not very enticing to me, lol.

I can't remember how to login to my FB account (and just don't care to try), so I just set up a spam filter to catch them and delete them. Within the first two months after I stopped logging in, I would receive 20+ e-mails a day from "friends I missed" or whatever. Now it's "only" about 3-5 a week according to spam.

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