MIUI users have a VIP pass for Facebook

karan

https://cloud.chip.icu/apps/files_sharing/publicpreview/r7rkg6JM4GrHfKs?file=&fileId=27597&x=1920&y=1080&a=true

This is what I saw in App Manager after rooting my device, I'm on a $100 poco device with MIUI Global 12.5.2
As you can see, these are system apps, preinstalled. Doesn't matter if you're going to uninstall that preinstalled Facebook app on first boot, doesn't matter if you don't use Facebook anyways. Facebook is in your phone, already.

And if you're thinking you will simply root and remove this, please make sure there are official LOS builds the device you buy, sub $100 phones dont have that, you will find no rom, and yes I've tried GSIs and no, I could not get it to work, so I'm stuck with MIUI, and let me tell you, rooting MIUI and trying to change stuff W I L L cause it to break. BADLY. That's my experience anyways.

Please don't buy Xiaomi, and in general the trash chinese brands.

arvid

This applies to all brands unfortunately. The only real exception I can think of are these hyperexpensive hipster 'open source' devices. Even with infinite money I wouldn't want to support those corpos, though. They capitalize on buzzwords and hope to make a quick buck. They're not genuinely 'alternative'. But they're the only ones with reasonably clean stock. They simply buy cheap parts, slap it together in some sweatshop, and sell at high markup with flashy marketing. End users can't do that due to lack of scale. If CHIP had a few thousand members interested, this would be somewhat realistic to do ourselves. Not going to be as cheap as for them, but probably still cheaper than paying the marketing price.
Especially with these generic images now, it should be fairly trivial. Just need to reach quantities a factory will accept an order for.

On the other hand, oldos mentioned how ironically Google's own 'Pixel' are easiest to de-google. I don't know how easy they are to buy 2nd hand, or if this still applies to the current models, but that looks like the easiest option if you are forced to have a 'smart'phone for one reason or another.

karan

In case the original image gets deleted, here is a backup

arvid

It will, you posted it on the ephemeral storage. The new one is up to you.