1w ago

Is there a way to view Facebook posts without an account?

I don't need anyone to tell me that Facebook sucks because I already know that, and I would never use it unless in my country, for reasons unknown to me, public and private institutions use Facebook as a primary method of sharing news, such as schedules or promotions.

I don't have the slightest intention of creating a Facebook account, but as I said, I need to see posts from certain Facebook accounts and every time I go to a Facebook page and scroll for 2 seconds I get a pop-up forcing me to create an account. And as far as I know, there is no sort of Piped front-end for Facebook, I would appreciate any help.

31 comments

I ended up making a burner account for this. I used a proton mail address and a plausible but fake name. My vpn kept getting flagged for special review where they, I shit you not, want you to send in a photo of a government ID. Eventually I found a VPN server that, for whatever reason, got passed this.
Then I spent 15 minutes hiding and locking every privacy setting I could find because I really didn't want to be shown to other people as a potential "friend".
I use the account just to monitor local emergencies and whatnot. An infuriating amount of local businesses and services only use facebook.
- Dang, I tried a few times and gave up with Facebook. Guess I'll try again. I loathe how everyone uses Facebook marketplace. Rip Craigslist
- I can skip over any business that only has a Facebook page. Plenty of choices out there...
  What I can't skip is when a political candidate is only on Facebook. I can't count the number of times I was trying to research candidates for local election and found they only had their policies on a locked Facebook page. Infuriating doesn't describe it.
  
  Plenty of choices out there…
  Not for me unfortunately. There's a number of businesses with zero online presence. They maybe have a facebook page with one entry congratulating Becky's son Roger for graduating with the class of 2015, and that's how you find the phone number. It's like the 90s again, except there's no phone book now. I don't understand it. These guys must be making a living purely off the business they get at church.
  The guy who dug my well asked why I decided on him specifically and I said, "Honestly? You're the only one who returned my call." I asked him why guys with a lease on a million dollar drill rig wouldn't return calls and he wasn't sure.
  I really didn't want to interface with Facebook at all but, fuck me. I have to join the Ruritan Club, or some shit, just to find an electrician.
- did you hear the latest from proton ceo? ugh
  
  Yeah, disappointing.

Same question, but Instagram.
Sucks that a bunch of businesses think an Instagram account is an acceptable substitute for a website.
- sucks for those businesses that they will never get my money. Seriously, if a business or individual does this, I completely disregard their existence immediately from my brain and never think about them again.
- I use this https://www.save-free.com/
  
  Thanks. Looks like I want their related tool https://www.free-viewer.app/
- Proxigram
  
  Is there any public instance that’s not blocked?
- Tracking

Just out of curiosity, what country would use Facebook for government announcements? That is fucking wild
- damn near every municipal government and municipal government office in the US.
  You often will not be able to find news announcements or information without accessing Facebook
  
  Governments forcing you to use a very specific company to be able to get their information.
  Sorry, that is "illegal" in my book
- Well, i can vouch that many small businesses and non-profits do here in the U.S. of A., and sometimes community announcements or events are on Facebook. I've never had an account, so i have missed many events that i know about, and probably thousands that i don't.
  It's hellish and socially isolating. Thankfully, there are other resources, but they seem woefully inadequate at times. NextDoor at least seems to be a reasonable town bulletin board but it is very noisy.

I used to have a burner account and a program that logged in to FB with Selenium and converted certain "pages" into RSS feeds. It worked great when it did, but Facebook has a lot of measures against scraping, and I burned out trying to maintain this.
I don't know a way to read their content without an account, which excludes me from a lot of local events.
- Which reminds me that rss-bridge has a Facebook backend that sometimes works and sometimes doesn't
  https://rss-bridge.github.io/rss-bridge/

Creating a different email account and then creating a account and using firefox with unlock will still do the work instead of doing all of this

You might be able to use the element zapper in uBlock Origin to remove the popup and overlay.
- I have tried, the pop-up is indeed removed but the background remains gray and you can't scroll, there is like an invisible gray wall that can't be removed, and I have tried to activate the annoyance filters without any success.
  
  sometimes the element picker can do a better job than the zapper

Unfortunately I have never seen one. I tried to create a burner account with tuta mail by they want my photo or gov id for verification.

We need to start letting people and organisations know that this isn't acceptable. I've been guilty of just using an anonymous account or letting it slide but having a mailing list is not much effort for example, honestly having a basic website is pretty cheap and easy.

I recommend: don't
- Large portion of the Internet is hidden inside FB pages :/
  
  A large portion of humanity's poop is hidden in sewers, and about as good for you as FB

31 comments