I've removed all Meta apps other than Whatsapp (and I don't love that). I haven't had the Facebook app on my phone in well over a decade. Had Instagram for a while, I was casually active on it, but Meta just keeps convincing me not to be trusted.

Facebook mobile is a suboptimal experience, which is fine, it just reminds me to use it less.

I treat WhatsApp as a hostile app[1], which means I deny any access to my stuff even if I get a subpar experience. In places where it's required (as where I live), this is the bare minimum a privacy-minded person can do.

[1] https://manualdousuario.net/en/a-less-affectionate-approach-...

On iOS, whatsapp is weirdly pushy about getting unlimited access to your photo album.

They also go out of their way to make it hard to save a photo without granting full access. Creepy.

I gave up Samsung Galaxy entirely over this .. even ended up switching to iPhone because I couldn't find another Android I liked as much.

Every Galaxy I ever owned came with uninstallable facebook apps, despite paying over 1k for the phone.

On the last one I had, I went in and did the ritual deleting facebook, and going in the settings to disable their other background apps.

I checked the phone 8 months later, and found that they had installed even more facebook apps that were now running without my consent.

That was the end of those phones for me, and I'm amazed that I put up with it for so long.

I was going to proudly boast that I don’t have any Meta apps on my phone. Got rid of FB a long time ago, never jumped on the Instagram train.

Then I your post and now I realize I’m still in the Meta world. Forgot about whatsapp for a second.

I just got a new phone and have been using WhatsApp via browser. It's a fight (e.g. you have to force desktop layout) and clearly something they'd prefer you didn't do but ... it's usable. Common actions like sharing photos, replying/reacting to a message, etc. all require multiple taps and futzing with the zoom level but they are possible. There are a few actions, like viewing one-time photos which are not available and the biggest problem is that you're still tethered to a device running a fully fledged version of the app. When your session expires, you're required to authenticate again by scanning a code generated by the native app. Thankfully, my old phone is still functional and this is one of the reasons I'm keeping it around. I'm considering it tainted by Meta and, since I won't be taking new photos or doing anything substantive with it, I guess that's fine.

I only have WhatsApp for communication in a club committee I'm on. I have a whole separate Android profile to maximise it's separation from anything and everything else.

While I still have WA installed for unrelated reasons, I'm so happy for Matrix Bridges...