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submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by grilled_chesse_eater@lemmy.world to c/privacyguides@lemmy.one

Meta/Facebook preinstalls an app called Meta Services (previously Facebook services) on a very large percentage of android devices (I've never used one without it) and while they claim it helps updates and synchronisation between different meta apps, it is very suspicious. Why preinstall it on devices of people who will potentialy never use a single meta app?

Go to your app list/app management and show system apps and find anything with the words "meta" or "Facebook" then turn off network access for those apps (if you can) and disable them. (eg. Meta app manager, Meta app installer).

https://www.askwoody.com/forums/topic/meta-services-an-android-app-or-not/

https://fixyourandroid.com/about/facebook-app-manager/

https://www.reddit.com/r/GalaxyS20FE/comments/ttmx4t/meta_services/

Edit: Looking around I have found several people complaining that this app is using their ram for 10 hours a day even though they don't use anything Meta. That's even more suspicious.

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[-] marcyiu@lemmy.sdf.org 11 points 1 year ago

For those that aren't aware, Universal Android Debloater is a great tool to uninstall/disable bloatware.

It lists out all potential bloatware found on your device and you could disable them with a mouse click. I always use it to debloat my new devices.

[-] Virkkunen@kbin.social 6 points 1 year ago

The problem with this app is that it's very liberal on its definition of bloatware. Specially on Samsung devices, it considers bloatware and marks for disable/uninstall many critical apps, including the dialer

[-] marcyiu@lemmy.sdf.org 6 points 1 year ago

Quite true that it recommends removing a lot of the apps, but we could always select and remove those we are sure we wouldn't need.

I personally don't and also wouldn't recommend selecting all of the apps on the recommended list and removing them all.

The author provides comments on most if not all of the apps stating it's use and whether it's safe to remove, and it's the very reason why I like the app.

this post was submitted on 08 Jul 2023
464 points (100.0% liked)

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