
Samsung Phone Users Perturbed to Find They Can't Delete Facebook - ourmandave
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-08/samsung-phone-users-get-a-shock-they-can-t-delete-facebook
======
LeonM
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 <name of package>

~~~
sergiosgc
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/](https://www.android.com/one/)

~~~
timrichard
I've had similar feelings... having finally ditched my Huawei Nexus 6P, which
I came to loathe. This was after years of buying Google developer devices
(going back to the G1). The 6P was the last straw, as I came to resent
spending hundreds on something with a soldered-in battery that could be (and
turned out to be) unusable after 24 months. The battery was a wreck.

I ended up getting an unlocked new LG V20 from eBay, which is a slightly older
phone, but the most decent spec I could find with a replaceable battery. Been
great so far, so it's been worth it for $190. Got a couple of spare LG
batteries too, for $25 each.

Nice reminder about the ADB uninstall trick, as there's some AT&T stuff that
would be nice to remove if possible. I'm also tempted by LineageOS, but need
the core Google Android apps - so probably too suspicious to use a bundled
install that someone else has put together.

~~~
petre
I'm using the bundled install, micro I think. It's okay, it works just fine.

I always wondered what to replace my Nexus 5 with, thanx for the info.

~~~
culot
Careful about buying 'new' copies of that phone on Ebay: there are none.
Almost all of the new copies bring sold on Ebay for the last year or so are
fraudulent. Finding an actual new LG V20, outside of perhaps Korea, is
unlikely.

edit: just checked Ebay, and yup, there are no legit new copies to be had,
except for _maybe_ AT&T or unlocked variants for $400+. There's a very low
chance that anyone will be/or has been able to find a new LG V20 for at least
a year, and almost certainly not for a reasonable price.

It is a similar situation for numerous other smartphones on the used market,
most new copies for sale are actually remanufactured/used that have been
repackaged and fraudulently resold as new from somewhere [originally] in
China. The fake LG V20 new copies began flooding the market somewhere in the
past 1-2 years, and have dominated since, but that practice is typical for
smartphones in general.

~~~
timrichard
Item was described as "new and sealed factory unlocked", and I had no
complaints when it arrived. If it is repackaged, I was completely unable to
tell any difference from other new devices I can remember unpacking (new from
Amazon or directly from a vendor). The spare batteries I sourced from a
separate UK supplier.

It's definitely intended for AT&T, but worked fine with Three in the UK as
soon as I entered the appropriate APN info and restarted.

Here's a relisting, for what it's worth :

[https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/372561134735?ViewItem=&item=37256...](https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/372561134735?ViewItem=&item=372561134735)

~~~
culot
Ah, perhaps my experiences are only valid for US/North American buyers of US
carrier variants. I know that there was a proliferation of repackaged V20
models being sold as new, and they all seemed to come from the same source -
they had the same packaging Chinese/international packaging, but the devices
included were used/remanufactured and were often incorrectly-specced for their
purported carriers, giving away their fraudulent origins.

Like the packaging shown in that Ebay link is incorrect for an AT&T variant.
AT&T almost never uses OEM packaging, instead they use some weird gimpy
branded boxes of their own. If it didn't come in a box like this, then it was
a fraudulently repackaged and was not new:

[https://i.imgur.com/n2dFAq2.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/n2dFAq2.jpg)

Also the printed inserts should have AT&T branding on them, and will include
AT&T-specific inserts. The flood of fraudulent LG V20s usually include generic
international versions of the printed inserts. Watch for the IMEI label on the
box being pasted over with another label, to hide the ID numbers of the device
the box originally came with.

Just because its not new doesn't mean it might not work fine, it just means
you'll likely never get warranty coverage; or if you do get LG to accept it
once they examine in-house for repair you're probably boned.

------
mancerayder
This story (and from different outlets) is now all over the press, which is
great.

Can I add another qualm in a similar vein? It involves Samsung TV's. I'm
convinced Samsung is increasingly mean.

I only use streaming services (Netflix, et. al.), and for the past year I've
been pretty pleased with "Smart TV" functionality, which makes life easy. That
is, until the following happened. After a recent update, the TV:

* Now starts up automatically onto some broadcast TV station, I think it's some sports station. There is No Way to turn this off, because it's not an app, but a new functionality built into the TV. By "broadcast TV" I don't mean the old-school antenna or cable, I mean the equivalent of live broadcast TV streaming via the Internet. If I turn the TV off, for example, while the YouTube app is up, when it turns back on, I get that streaming broadcast crap again.

* The broadcast crap has commercials, and sound on.

* Ads have ALSO popped up in place of one of the "buttons" in the Apps menu.

You're not enraged yet? Let me save the best for last:

* When using the voice functionality on the remote during a search (either on YouTube or someplace), a popup jumped up telling me that I needed to accept THREE terms and conditions (three checkmarks), and click OK, or I could not use the voice functionality. The TOC involved aggregating my searches and data for ad purposes, and it said something about other Samsung devices. Luckily, I don't own any.

I went back to plugging my PC into the TV.

 _Folks, please do not buy any Samsung products._

~~~
chrismeller
I have a Roku for these and many other reasons. I have never seen or touched a
smart TV that didn’t suck in multiple ways, even if it was just the laggy as
hell Java interface.

I’m not saying the Roku is perfect, it’s far from it (and I’d love to be able
to give them feedback), but at least if they piss me off I can throw their
device in the trash and replace it with an Apple TV, Google Chromecast, Amazon
Fire, etc. and still have a perfectly well functioning 4K TV.

~~~
senoroink
Since it's relevant to the topic conversation, only use a Roku if you're
blocking its outgoing requests. It sends out an insane amount of outbound data
that goes beyond just your viewing habits (e.g. wifi name, "connection data")
[1].

Installing pi-hole reveals how noisy a Roku is [2].

[1] - [https://docs.roku.com/doc/userprivacypolicy/en-
us](https://docs.roku.com/doc/userprivacypolicy/en-us) [2] -
[https://imgur.com/a/n5zcAwl](https://imgur.com/a/n5zcAwl)

------
chrismorgan
This is nothing new. Google especially has been in this position since the
start of Android.

I have quite a list of apps that I’ve disabled but can’t uninstall: Chrome,
Drive, Galaxy Apps, Gmail, Google Play Movies & TV, Google Play Music, Google
Text-to-speech engine, Hancom Office Viewer, Launcher3, Memo, Photo
Screensavers, S Planner, Samsung Billing, Samsung Push Service, TalkBack,
Weather, YouTube. I’m going to try LeonM’s technique to see if I can in fact
uninstall them without rooting the device (which I have failed to accomplish;
it seems to me that you’re basically stuck if you don’t use a flagship device,
and my Samsung J1 (2016) isn’t flagship).

Then there are plenty of others that I’d like to disable but can’t; including
but not at all limited to: Email, Email, Email composer, Email storage, Email
sync, Internet, S Planner, Samsung account, Samsung Cloud Data Relay.

~~~
vorpalhex
Samsung devices are the worst. When I had an S8, I ran a toolkit that would
constantly remove (and re-remove when it appeared again) almost all of the
Samsung crapware, but even that is subpar since you need some of it like their
Health product for basic phone features to work.

Samsung is by far the worst at it. I won't buy their phones anymore.

~~~
komali2
Recently got an s9 and there's a whole button I can't use because it is bound
to the "Launch Bixby" function. I'm not exactly sure what Bixby is or does,
some sort of voice control (but I already have google now?), but it requires
me to have a samsung account to use, which I don't want/need.

So, unused button. Wish I could bind it to camera or something, no such luck.

~~~
Faark
> So, unused button. Wish I could bind it to camera or something, no such
> luck.

The reddit thread about this story mentions an app "bxActions" that sees to be
doing exactly that and might be worth a look:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/ae265u/samsung_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/ae265u/samsung_phone_users_perturbed_to_find_they_cant/edmeti2/)

------
designtofly
I'm glad this story has gone viral recently. Hopefully there will be more
pressure to stop this practice.

I've been using Android for a number of years now and between the handset
manufacturers and the wireless providers, there has been undeletable crapware
since the beginning. I've been slowly modifying my behavior in response. I
stopped buying phones directly from the wireless providers (e.g. Verizon).
This has noticeably improved my experience. Every time I upgrade my phone, I
look into the Google flagship Android phones, but they always have some
critical flaws that drive me to buy the Samsung Galaxy phones. The same thing
happened a few months ago when I chose the Galaxy S9+ over the Pixel 3's. I
also always think about switching to Apple iPhone, since I do think they take
user experience and privacy more seriously than Google Android.

While I'm on the subject. Samsung, please get rid of Bixby and all of your
crappy Samsung apps. I hate the feeling that there's two OS's loaded on my
phone... the Android layer and the Samsung layer (which I never use but always
get prompted for unless I figure out how to disable it).

~~~
ayoisaiah
I don't think all Samsung apps are "crappy". I quite enjoy using some of them
like Samsung Health and Secure Folder. What needs to end is preloading so many
duplicate apps and then preventing the user from removing them easily.

Personally, I can live with this situation since I can always remove what I
don't like with adb, and I quite enjoy a lot of the features and changes that
Samsung added on top of stock Android.

~~~
diffeomorphism
> What needs to end is preloading so many duplicate apps

That is not possible. They can either have only the google apps (great, just
like ancient IE monopoly times) or "duplicate apps", but they can not omit the
google apps if they want google play.

Also, preinstalls matter very much as can be clearly seen in the market share
of IE, edge, chrome and safari.

~~~
i_cant_speel
You only quoted the first half of their sentence. They said duplicate apps are
only an issue when you aren't allowed to remove the one (or both) that you
don't use.

------
Bahamut
While I like using FB, this is type of behavior by Android OEMs that largely
drove me to the iPhone. The main reason I rooted my phone prior was to get rid
of crappy apps I don't use from being on my screen.

Around 4-5 years ago, Android phone manufacturers started locking down their
phones more while not letting them be rooted. They didn't solve the problem of
having undeleteable apps waste my time & space with clear advertising plays.

After my experience with the Galaxy S5, I quickly jumped to the iPhone 6 when
it came out, and haven't looked back. I've used Android for a period of time
in parallel with a second phone, but it only confirmed my reasoning for
bailing for the iPhone - the Android experience is just way behind.

~~~
higginsc
I've been an iPhone user for a decade and am a huge Apple fanboy, but even
with that bias, I have to say this is a load of crap. Apple has been adding
loads of undeletable bloat since forever. they only really let you start
deleting the Apple pre-installed apps very recently. I still have a folder on
my devices called "iCrap."

~~~
Bahamut
There's a huge difference between Apple's built in apps and the third party
apps doing who knows what background processing/data mining on phone usage.
The effects on performance such as battery life is very noticeable.

~~~
samstave
This is what I want to know; If you get a brand new device and it has FB app
installed - but if you never open it or use FB, does that app still monitor
things like browsing activity and report anything back to FB?

~~~
monkeynotes
Aren't android and iOS apps mostly sandboxed? It would be news to me if AppX
could access browsing information from Chrome, at least without asking you for
permission. Apps can't access folder i/o without permission, surely they can't
monitor browsing history without permission.

~~~
dijit
iOS apps are heavily sandboxed (and given next to no process time when
backgrounded).

Android apps are a bit more free, that leads to a lot of apps being good at
talking to each other. But the cost is that your sandbox is less sandboxy.

Permissions are a moot point when you're talking about bundled apps because
they're already going to be approved for all permissions.

------
Yizahi
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.

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

~~~
Majestic121
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...](https://research.utwente.nl/en/publications/the-hidden-energy-cost-
of-web-advertising) [2] :
[http://www.climatechangenews.com/2017/12/11/tsunami-data-
con...](http://www.climatechangenews.com/2017/12/11/tsunami-data-consume-one-
fifth-global-electricity-2025/)

~~~
BeniBoy
I found this recent study[1] very interesting as well. Their conclusion: 'In
2016 online advertising consumed 106 TWh of energy and the infrastructure 1059
TWh'. So around 10%.

My view is that adblocking is an environmental necessity. And paying business
model should always be provided. As a footnote, they estimated that If Netflix
switched to a video ad model, 42.02 TWh of added electricity would be
consumed!

[1]:[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S019592551...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0195925517303505)

------
habitue
I'm not a huge facebook fan but this thing about only being able to disable
but not delete the app is misleading about how sinister it is.

All it means is that the app comes installed by being part of the ROM image.
It can be disabled which is essentially the same as deleting it, except you
don't get the space back (which is fine since it's the rom, you can't use it
without reflashing anyway). Once disabled, the Facebook app won't be able to
track you or be loaded into memory.

What this deal is really about is the Facebook app coming preinstalled on new
Samsung phones. Bloatware: yes. But don't make too big a deal about the
"undeletable" thing.

~~~
EpicEng
Agreed, but from what I've been reading/hearing, the primary concern is "can
FB track me even if the app is disabled?" These are non-technical people who
don't trust FB. It's a valid question.

~~~
perfunctory
"These are non-technical people ..."

Don't know. I have the same question. "can FB track me even if the app is
disabled?" How the hell do we know it's impossible?

~~~
propogandist
it's not necessarily the facebook app (if you have it disabled), but most free
and even paid apps are 'phoning' facebook and sending up data when you open
the app (as part of the FB SDK). This is what became big news recently.

I've noticed it for years and thought it was widely known. There are apps that
will try to hit graph.facebook.com before they even connect to their own
services. You can install a VPN based firewall to block this behavior.

------
SmellyGeekBoy
I hate to be one of "those people" but I logged out of Facebook on all of my
devices on New Year's Eve and haven't been back since. I used to check the
site multiple times per day. I thought I'd miss out on a few groups but to be
honest the people I know from those groups IRL keep me updated on the rare
important announcement - ie a couple of upcoming events. I haven't missed it
at all.

Full Disclosure: I do still have Messenger Lite on my phone, but with
notifications disabled so I only check it a couple of times per day.

~~~
Kiro
What service do you use for chatting?

~~~
chrstphrknwtn
My telephone

~~~
Kiro
I want a phone without voice. I hate when people call me and I never call
anyone. I wouldn't want to be friends with anyone forcing me to call them to
interact.

~~~
chrstphrknwtn
Yeah, I've also thought a phone without voice would be great; an iPod touch
with data sort of thing.

Having said that, voice calls are simply more productive for quite a few
things.

Making "must not interact via telephony" a condition of friendship seems a bit
much. Is meeting in person also out of the question?

~~~
Kiro
Sorry, I exaggerated for effect. However, I do have a phobia of phone calls
and very seldom pick up the phone so if that would be the only way to
communicate with someone I'm sure the friendship would die by itself.

------
drugme
_Inside the flat a fruity voice was reading out a list of figures which had
something to do with the production of pig-iron. The voice came from an oblong
metal plaque like a dulled mirror which formed part of the surface of the
right-hand wall. Winston turned a switch and the voice sank somewhat, though
the words were still distinguishable. The instrument (the telescreen, it was
called) could be dimmed, but there was no way of shutting it off completely._

------
nojvek
FaceBook is scammy on many levels. Their ads business always reports very
inflated numbers.

We spend $1000/mnth on FB ads. They show millions of impressions and 20k link
clicks. However only 2k visits are shown by both google analytics and Mixpanel
on the actual website.

It really seems like an empire that will crumble some day.

~~~
jannes
Maybe some of your users block Google Analytics/Mixpanel while not blocking
Facebook ads. For example, because they are using the mobile app or because
Facebook ads are harder to block...

~~~
driverdan
There is no way that 90% of their traffic is blocking both GA and Mixpanel.

------
iamben
I feel like Facebook is getting more and more desperate.

There have been times I've loved it, but in the last year or two I've dialled
back my usage to almost nothing. Now I get regular emails / (and when I log in
a whole load of) red dot notifications - both things that used to be alerts
about just _ME_ - that say things like "[friend name] just posted".

With an undeletable app, I wonder how far away we are from someone embedding
Facebook notifications in the OS?

~~~
lapnitnelav
Yeah, I've had the same feeling the last 8 weeks or so, my phone is regularly
spammed by FB's notifications about some random crap that is irrelevant to me.

I was discussing that with a friend and sure enough, within the minute, a FB
notification about adding some random dude popped up.

------
giancarlostoro
> 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 be
certain) is to disable Facebook and related uninstallable apps. If I bothered
to root my phone I'd remove them as well. It's obnoxious that phone
manufacturers include more than just vanilla Android, which is why I will
likely get Nokia or Motorola for my next phone, they're usually unlocked and
not riddled with crapware, funny how much cheaper they are too...

~~~
SmellyGeekBoy
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.

~~~
giancarlostoro
> The bundled crapware is the reason I switched from Samsung to OnePlus.

I'm not sure I trust them either, unless this apparent backdoor situation has
since been resolved? I'd rather stick to Nokia or Motorola.

[https://www.wired.com/story/oneplus-phones-have-an-
unfortuna...](https://www.wired.com/story/oneplus-phones-have-an-unfortunate-
backdoor-built-in/)

~~~
dvfjsdhgfv
Fortunately the backdoor requires physical access to the device, so it's not
what worries me. I was more concerned about their data collection, but it
looks like they changed to opt-in since:
[https://www.tomsguide.com/us/oneplus-data-leak-
fix,news-2596...](https://www.tomsguide.com/us/oneplus-data-leak-
fix,news-25968.html)

I'm not sure how much I can trust them after that, though. They had a real
chance to make a difference and they blew it.

------
charlysl
Am I the only one experiencing "Facebook is so bad" fatigue? I am not implying
that there should be no criticism, I believe quite the opposite, but I think
we have heard all of this before, many times over.

~~~
apatters
As long as they force their shitty software down people's throats every day
(literally what the article is about), people will keep complaining about
them. Just like everyone who's forced to use Comcast complains.

In fact it's mainly abusive monopolies that tend to receive this nonstop
criticism. Ordinary crappy companies go out of business because people can
switch to their alternatives, then no one complains about them anymore.

~~~
culot
> force their shitty software down people's throats every day

Did Facebook force OEMs to include their software on their devices? Isn't it
more likely that OEMs are getting paid for the placement and the blame for its
inclusion lies with OEMs?

~~~
apatters
Ok, fair enough. The article isn't about Facebook forcing their shitty
software down our throats (which they still do, via notification and email
spam).

It's about Facebook paying OEMs to force its shitty software down our throats.

IMO not really a meaningful distinction in this context though.

~~~
culot
I think it is meaningful distinction in this context. The responsibility for
the inclusion of these apps lies solely on the OEMs and carriers. If there's
beef to had then it has to be laid at the feet of the OEMs and carriers.

------
helloguillecl
Also, they will endlessly re-suscribe you to their spam even after you
unsubscribe.

Some months after unsubscribing from friend's posts email alerts, I changed my
password to something I did not want to remember, only to be automatically re-
subscribed, without notice, to their post updates.

~~~
paulie_a
Facebook has a ton of dark patterns. There is always one unread message in
there shitty messenger client. Except there are zero conversations because I
deleted them.

And the messenger app is an incredible piece of junk, whoever did the ux with
the chat heads should find a new line of work.

~~~
eyeundersand
Hmm. What do you dislike about the Messenger app?

~~~
paulie_a
Always having one unread message and the stupid chat head interface.

------
Eli_P
If a giant like Facebook had bought Match Group and Tinder, would it be
possible for it to manipulate dating and thus breeding people up to
statistically significant scale? I feel it like being "@" in somebody's Dwarf
Fortress. World's so narcissistic.

~~~
CodeSheikh
What makes you think Match Group and Tinder are not already statistically
matching people based on their algorithms? They are part of IAC and IAC is a
giant publishing conglomerate based out of NYC.

~~~
Eli_P
Yikes! There's only hope they'll add some paid service where I can find love
and hunt deer with a crossbow in special national park, wild way. Just like
those two domains, wild and artificial, from Huxley's Brave New World.

------
caiocaiocaio
Mouse over the green icon in the corner, and you will see a 'like this on
Facebook' button. I have never seen a single article criticising Facebook that
didn't have one.

~~~
codq
The most effective crapware is ever-present, pervasive crapware.

------
userbinator
This is one of the reasons why I bought a generic MTK phone: they come with an
unlocked bootloader (and at least several years ago when I did this, it seemed
to be the case that they even _couldn 't_ be locked because the hardware had
no such feature), and the first thing I do is a full flash dump for backup
purposes. Then I root it, delete the stuff I don't need (surprisingly little
comes with these generic phones; they usually don't come with much more than
the stock Android install), and customise it to my needs. The fact that
Android is Java-based and quite modular helps a lot with the modding too.

(Some of these phones do come with ad/spy/malware, but since they're easily
rootable, it's not hard to remove. One could say the relative lack of security
means the user is on an equal footing with the crapware authors and the
manufacturer, whereas locked-down devices from companies like Samsung trade
off user-control for company-control.)

------
raarts
If the pre-installed Facebook app is just a stub, why is it needed in the
first place? To keep the data around for a reinstall?

------
loop0
After years of using android I just moved from my galaxy s8 to an iphone xs
max, and I was surprised to see that apple allows to uninstall most of their
apps. What I usually did on my former samsung was to disable the apps I didn't
needed, it is not the same as uninstalling it but it does the job.

~~~
wvenable
On iOS, the built in apps aren't "uninstalled" either as they're stored in the
OS image just like on Android. So when you delete them, you're just disabling
them the same way, and you can put them back just as easily.

The difference is that Apple makes the operation appear to be the same as
deleting them and that's a good thing from a UI perspective. Clearly the
"disable" option in Android is too confusing for some people.

~~~
iscrewyou
But when you redownload a now-deleted-preloaded app, it actually downloads it.
Which makes me think that Apple actually removes the App package from the
phone.

Please correct me if I’m wrong.

------
anonu
Yes - FB s*cks. But as a long time Android user - this is more disheartening
from the perspective of my continued use of Android.

What Apple and the iPhone have demonstrated over the last few years is that
they really care about their user's privacy and control over their apps.

This does not seem to be true for Google and Android.

------
foobaw
This is fear-mongering. The app is a stub and it doesn't do any tracking. I
used to work at an OEM - this is just an agreement that Samsung and Facebook
signed.

------
justtopost
Hardly new. It was unwanted a decade ago, when forced down my throat. It just
seems people are wising up to the monopoly status. I thought the IE case would
have preempted this preinstalled crap. What kind of law can help us seperate
hardware, software, and personal rights?

------
syntaxing
This kind of crap is why I always buy phones that have stock Android. I have
been a long time Nexus customer but after Google dropped the line I went for
the Essential Phone during the $250 sale. Easily one of the best phone with
stock Android .

~~~
Steltek
The reviews of the Essential PH-1 were hilarious in this regard.

People were annoyed that they had to install "obvious" apps for their
Essential that every other manufacturer forcibly included.

~~~
syntaxing
Yeah, I'm not sure why the PH-1 didn't take off. 128 GB storage, Snapdragon
835, and ceramic backing is amazing for less than $300 after tax. The only
"downside" is the non-OLED screen, weird reception for T-mobile, and subpar
camera app (which the pixel 3 port fixes). The screen is still great and
vibrant though.

~~~
culot
They would have needed to get on Verizon or T-Mobile to really make a dent in
the US, being only available on Sprint was never going to be enough.

------
usefulcat
"Not cool, Facebook, not cool."

I mean, yeah, but what about the device makers? It's not like FB can force
them to do this..

------
CaptainZapp
Will they also pull such shit with KaiOS?

I thought I'm a happy camper, when Nokia reissued the 8110. Ahh, no Google
spyware, no Apple extorcionist paricing.

How wrong I was.

First of all it comes with Google Maps and Google Assistant. Then after the
first software update it puts in Twitter and three crappy games, which full
versions need to be bought and which cannot be removed.

Their privacy statement is also noo what I would call encouraging.

Do I really need to shell out for an IPhone after all?

~~~
culot
I wonder what developer access you can achieve with that 8110 device? For
FirefoxOS devices the debugging and developer stuff used to be fun via Firefox
browser and was simply Android on the low level. Also FirefoxOS devices were
generally not locked down in any meaningful way.

Curious to see what you can hack with their devices on that FirefoxOS fork.
Hmmm. Need to get me one of those phones, so cool looking anyway.

------
infinity0
I use [https://lineage.microg.org/](https://lineage.microg.org/) these days, a
lot of things do work fine with a fake Google Play Services.

[https://infinity0.github.io/droid-hacks/](https://infinity0.github.io/droid-
hacks/) for more technical tips, half-finished and badly-written.

------
helloguillecl
I see all this dark patters and user-unfriendly tactics as a way to deceive
the market with metrics that wont matter if in the long term you lose user's
trust.

It might increase the perceived value of a company to retain some users, but
in the long term such tactics are damaging the company reputation, thus
effectively diminishing the value of the company/product.

------
apocalypstyx
Sometimes, I wish Rick Roderick were still around to comment on the present,
then I realize that he did / is, even if he did it in 1990.

 _But in the matrix of needs, in such a possible future system, as if it
weren’t already kind of like that. Within such a possible future system, the
only command or need that the machine would not respond to would be the one
command that I have a feeling some of us would most want to type into the
machine. Which is the demand that it destroy itself, you see, that would be my
problem with the machine. It would meet all the needs except my need to see it
destroyed. It would take every other command well, and meet every other need
well, but the need to just shut it down._

[http://rickroderick.org/108-philosophy-and-post-modern-
cultu...](http://rickroderick.org/108-philosophy-and-post-modern-
culture-1990/)

------
qwerty456127
Don't use default smartphone firmwares, don't buy smartphones you can't
install a custom firmware to.

~~~
chrismeller
Sure, but let’s be honest, back in 2007 when the first iPhone came out it was
a huge deal that Verizon, et al couldn’t install crap on it by default because
it came straight from Apple.

No “normal human” is ever going to install their own OS on anything. At least
Apple enforces some standards...

~~~
qwerty456127
> Sure, but let’s be honest, back in 2007 when the first iPhone came out it
> was a huge deal that Verizon, et al couldn’t install crap on it by default
> because it came straight from Apple.

Good, nevertheless all my friends jailbroke their iPhones to install apps not
available in the store.

> No “normal human” is ever going to install their own OS on anything.

Whoever cares about having at least minimal degree of privacy will at least
get root access, remove bloatware and install tools like droidwall and
xprivacy on their android phones.

~~~
dijit
Your friends are more technical than 99% of the population of earth.

I applaud you for having friends who are so technically literate.

I think you would do well to remember the rest of the human race though.

~~~
qwerty456127
I'm curious what portion of people lack a geek friend they can trust to set-up
whatever for them.

~~~
chrismeller
I'm curious what portion of people you think even know that jailbreaking
exists, let alone why they would want it done on their phone. This is, without
any sort of exaggeration, a 1% issue.

------
tempodox
Corollary: Every post with “Facebook” in its title appears on HN.

------
NoPicklez
In Australia the ACCC which is our competition and consumer watchdog, released
a preliminary report in December, into the dominance of the likes of Google
and Facebook.

One of things they are proposing is stopping likes of Google from being a
default search engine in Australian devices. In that consumers will be offered
a choice rather than provided one as default.

I would really like to see this extend through to bloatware applications where
possible such as the myriad of random Microsoft apps that get installed, as
well as the Google suite in non-Google devices.

I should be able to remove the applications that are on my device and use the
applications only I want to. If I use Spotify for music, then I should be able
to remove Google Music and Samsung Music. In the same way that I can remove
Apple music and use Spotify on my iPhone.

------
dang
Url changed from [https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/09/facebook-is-the-new-
crapwa...](https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/09/facebook-is-the-new-crapware/),
which points to this.

------
16bytes
I'm not quite sure why this is controversial. "Undeletable" applications is as
old as keeping factory-reset images on devices.

Would people prefer that you could "remove" apps even if that meant they were
still part of what's stored on the phone?

If you factory reset the phone, people expect it to look like whatever it
looked like whenever you first started the device after taking it out of the
box.

That's why you can't uninstall it; it's part of the system image. If there's
an issue with how this work, the issue is that there are bundled apps, not
that you can't uninstall them.

~~~
mjevans
What I would like is a bootloader that has the following features:

    
    
        * End user management of trusted keys
        * Keep most major manufacturer keys pre-loaded (even if disabled for current use)
        * Factory reset online, not from device contents.
    

When a 'factory reset' or other base-reinstall is requested, look at an
indirect URI associated with the preferred active key (this means WiFi,
Ethernet, or other network connection must be made). Similar to how SYSLINUX
(in various flavors) looks for different identifiers from specific to generic,
query for an existing 'file' that matches the device model and serial / MAC in
a pre-defined way. When a possible file is found download the bootstrap,
validate that it is signed with an allowed key* (if it has a valid sig, but
the key isn't allowed, ask the end user), if it's valid run downloaded
bootstrap.

The downloaded bootstrap should, ideally, validate and re-configure the flash
layout, possibly update system firmware if desirable, then apply the current
version (or maybe offer a choice of back versions if applicable) of the
'factory' image for the device.

This way updates to the core image can be shipped with factory resets instead
of some fossilized version of the software that should never be used for
security or incompatibility reasons.

The above also applies to how generic computers should work, I understand that
Apple devices are fairly close to this obvious process but I believe (offhand)
that they lack end-user empowerment / management of authorized authorities at
a bios level.

------
sleepydog
I also noticed when troubleshooting a VPN and doing some tcpdumps that my
Xperia Z5C was making pretty frequent DNS lookups of mqtt-mini.facebook.com .
From what I could find on Google search my best guess was that this endpoint
is used by facebook messenger, but I don't have that installed. This is
despite the fact that I've disabled the facebook app.

I took a second look while writing this comment and there's an addtional
"Facebook services" app, which I've just gone ahead and disabled. Maybe that
will stop the requests.

------
dd36
I think all of these privacy problems can be traced back to contract law and
contracts of adhesion where consumers are automatically opted into terms
consumers would never wittingly opt into voluntarily.

------
grawprog
Every samsung smartphone i've ever owned came with an undeletable facebook
app(along with a bunch of other undeleteable crap) preinstalled since at least
android 2 days.

------
AdmiralAsshat
FWIW, this might be a carrier pre-load thing rather than a Samsung thing: on
the S8+ that I bought unlocked direct from Samsung, the Facebook app can be
uninstalled.

------
TheMagicHorsey
As anyone really surprised or "perturbed" by this? This nonsense has been
going on for years. I can't remember a Samsung phone without garbage,
undeletable apps.

I have a Samsung Galaxy Note 8. I like it. I took all the undeletable apps and
removed them from my home screen. I hardly notice they are there. You can also
shut down their permissions in the settings menu. They are basically inert.

------
macawfish
It's the old crapware too

------
jannes
Even my Galaxy S7 Edge from 2015 came with an undeletable Facebook app. Why is
the article portraying this as a recent development?

~~~
culot
I think it's mostly a Facebook hit piece.

And actually since back then Facebook apps have become easier to disable on
most Android phones. Used to be that you couldn't delete them nor disable them
on most phones. Nowadays is usually possible to disable the apps, and they are
usually just stubs, so their impact is minimal to null.

Still would rather not that have them shipped, but when it comes to bloatware
I'd say Google was a much bigger culprit.

------
willart4food
2019: Samsung Phone Users Perturbed to Find They Can't Delete Facebook

2023: iPhone Users Perturbed to Find They Can't logout from Facebook

2025: Google Phone Users Perturbed to Find Their photos are automatically
posted on Facebook

2027: Facebook Branded Phone Users Perturbed to Find Their life is cached 24/7
and automatically posted on Facebook

------
bnolsen
Not sure if 4+ years is "new".

------
novaRom
Same problem in my Android TV set. Lesson learned: will never buy anything
with Android TV anymore.

------
anoplus
This is my motivation to switch to iPhone. Samsung must be punished. Hope
Samsung read this.

------
mark-r
I quick pulled my new Moto out of my pocket to make sure they didn't do the
same thing - they didn't. I have never used Facebook and I never will, haven't
trusted them from the beginning.

------
hiergiltdiestfu
This news is so old, I was sure the date on the article was 2009.

------
StreamBright
Happens when tech is largely driven by ad companies.

------
stuaxo
My Android TV has undeletable facebook inside it :(

------
sizzle
This is why I'll always run rooted Android and take back control.

------
ccnafr
Fortunately I can still remove it from my current/older device

------
natch
I haven’t been following... is Android open source, or isn’t it?

~~~
CivBase
_Android_ is open source, but a lot of the functionality delivered by modern
phones relies on the closed-source app suite provided by Google (namely Google
Play Services).

~~~
jannes
And closed-source hardware drivers.

------
Sir_Cmpwn
This kind of anti-consumer behavior should be outright illegal.

------
usr1987
Lineage OS an option... I love having a minimal OS

------
yellowapple
Hasn't this been the case for years now? Why is this only now newsworthy?

------
kentf
iPhone

------
partiallypro
I'm no Facebook fan, but doesn't it feel like there is a coordinated media
effort to destroy Facebook? It's quite strange. Outside of WSJ, Google seems
to get away with it almost the same things Facebook is doing. I'm not sure
what to make of it.

~~~
Yhippa
I can live without Facebook. I can't live without Google.

~~~
EForEndeavour
I think you'd find a way to "live" (i.e., survive in the modern world) if
Google disappeared. Their dominance makes it extremely difficult to avoid
using their products and services, but it's possible.

