I’m guessing the answer is “no”, but thought I’d ask for advice here regardless.
I don’t have FB. Haven’t for years. I ditched it long before I started giving a shit about Privacy, it’s just so toxic and silly.
That said, I’m a retro gamer constantly on the hunt for holes in my NES/SNES collection and unfortunately the folks in my area seem to be quite a bit more active on FB Marketplace than Craiglist, Offerup, or Nextdoor For Sale pages. In the past I’ve asked my spouse to message the seller for me and then show up with cash and buy what they’re selling. Increasingly, sellers are scared of scams and seem to be less responsive to this type of inquiry.
Is there anyway to minimize footprint in FB? Or perhaps a way to use Messenger without an account? You can browse the marketplace pages of your community without an account, but they’ll pester you the whole time and you can’t save your locale without signing in.
Or am I out of luck entirely? I thought about posting “In Search Of” type posts on Craiglists to bring the buyers to me, but my area has several of those already and I’m not after bulk lots or other platforms other than the old Nintendo stuff.
I do check Ebay as well and have found a few gems for decent prices and a local shop occasionally has some stuff that hasn’t been completely picked over, or i show up right after someone sells their collection and that’s rad, but that’s rare.
First, it’s important to realize that Meta is likely tracking you already through its ad-related services even if you don’t have an actual FB account. Countless retailers and services are using Meta and Google for ads and analytics and it’s virtually impossible to be completely off their radar if you do any online shopping, banking, or service consumption.
Even with the use of VPNs, uBlock and other tools, Meta likely already has your particulars, including full name, phone number, email, and physical address simply by way of family members and colleagues saving that information to their own address books which are then shared to Meta through FB, WhatsApp, etc. In this way, your name, phone number and/or email address has likely already been associated to otherwise anonymized data through retailer back-ends.
That said, if Marketplace is important to you I would simply create a FB account and use it solely for that. I would avoid installing any FB/messenger apps, and opt for a browser-only experience in order to minimize additional privacy infringement. Use FF containers, incognito mode, or a separate browser altogether for FB access if you feel it’s necessary.
Meta has taken a hardline approach to fake/obfuscated accounts, so I suggest using legitimate tombstone info but only provide what’s necessary for account generation. Anything less and you’ll risk a deactivated account, or Marketplace ban.
Don’t overthink it. If you use the platform with basic care (no apps, no persistent cookies), then the most they’re going to glean is that you like shopping for retro games and other used goods.
Excellent points. I haven’t tried it yet, but the app Hermit has sandboxing as well and creates PWA-type apps out of websites. I’ve been using it for self hosted services that don’t have and Android app component to them. Works reasonably well but I’m not trying to hide info…from myself :)
Use Firefox to browse it. This addon keeps FB in its own container so it can’t read anything from other sites you visit. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/facebook-container/
Then just make a throw away email and use that to make a FB account.
may also need a burner phone. they sometimes require SMS verification, though that might be mostly for Tor or VPN.
Depending on the comfort level of your spouse, asking them to use their account would be best.
One of the forms of trust in Marketplace is how long the person’s Facebook account has existed, how many friends they have, and whether there are photos. If you create a burner account with no photo, no connections, and “Joined Facebook in 2024”, you’ll have a rough start.
I have had people show up who don’t match the account and they say it’s their partner or whatnot, never phased me.
If you do decide to make an account, push people to rate your interactions after you make a successful purchase. After 3 messages are sent back and forth, you get an option to rate the seller and buyer. Just tell them you rated them well and would like a rating as you are new to Marketplace.
I do hate Facebook for what it is, but even here in Canada where Kijiji was once king, Marketplace has taken over. I care about the used market (and the positive effects on the environment) too much to pass it up.
You could use a throwaway email and signup for an account. The account creation is a little tricky if you don’t use a “real name” but a name generator website may help in this, or use a combination of two tv character names.
Also use a privacy oriented web browser that signs you out each time, something like mule for android or librewolf for desktops.
One thing not to do is use the FB app or the messenger app on your phone, instead do everything on a browser.
I’d suggest a simpler setup of Firefox, uBlock Origin, and a container extension to keep Facebook isolated from your regular browsing. Facebook Fences is a decent one, which also blocks the “Share on Facebook” buttons (which have embedded trackers) on sites.
Unfortunately if you want to use the marketplace, you will need to make an account. Some people have suggested a fake account, and there may be some merit to that. But in reality, Facebook does so much tracking across the web that they’ll already have a phantom account for you. Basically, they track traffic across the web (with their various share buttons, like counters, etc,) and will build a phantom account for you based on your browsing habits.
Then when you make your account, (regardless of whether or not it’s a real name or email,) they’ll simply link that phantom account to your created account. So even when you first make an account, they already have a really good idea of who you are based on your traffic patterns. Hell, they probably even know right away that it’s a fake account.
Using a privacy oriented browser is great, but it ironically makes you easy to fingerprint when signing into accounts, because very few people are cruising around the web with librewolf as their daily driver.
What an excellent use of a title and first line of text:
I knew just what OP meant, based on context. Sure, it could have been phrased better, but there’s no need to be rude.
You knew what OP meant when they said “Facebook Marketplace”? Are you clairvoyant?
It’s posted to a privacy community and everyone is aware of the privacy concerns with anything Facebook. It’s pretty obvious that they’re saying that for some privacy-conscious people the answer to using Facebook Marketplace is no, but they want to know if anyone has advice for using it.
I don’t have the first clue what you’re asking, bc of the previously mentioned title issue.
It’s kinda funny you demanded higher journalistic standards from a Lemmy post, but you’ve taken a screenshot and written three replies… You could have just read beyond the first line by now
So you read the title and tagline but ignored the body of the post?? Why would you tell anyone that let alone complain about it
