There’s been lots of media speculation (and US government speculation) about Huawei spying or being a national security risk, but it’s mostly just speculation. Neither the US (nor other governments) have offered up much if any evidence to back the claims.
When it comes to Facebook, though, we all know from media reports that the company has been caught out making your personal data available to people it shouldn’t (Hello, Cambridge Analytica), and generally representing pretty poor privacy practices.
In a boon to embattled phone manufacturer Huawei, Facebook has kicked an own goal, telling Huawei that it can no longer provide Facebook as a pre-installed app on Huawei devices. This is great news for those who value their privacy, and see Facebook as a huge threat to that privacy.
Why has Facebook done this?
Well, to comply with the US-imposed ban on US companies supplying goods or services to Huawei, of course. This is one move we can get behind, though.
Pre-installed apps are terrible, and if you’re one of the growing many who don’t like Facebook’s practices, or want their apps pre-installed on your new phone, then you’ll probably welcome this development.
The move is unlikely to have a big impact on Huawei, as Facebook can hardly be considered a key inclusion that their phones cannot survive without, unlike Google Services.
I would like to buy any phones as long as there is no stupid Facebook app pre-installed.
You can buy any… I don’t think there are any phone that has facebook pre-installed
My S8 had FB pre-installed and without root you can’t uninstall it, only disable it. I realise that’s a slightly old phone but still an ex-flagship and decent phone these days and still available for purchase.
My Galaxy Note 9 has the Facebook app, which can only be disabled. Unless you root the phone. Come to think of it, all of my Samsung phones on the past few years have had Facebook pre-installed and not removable without root.
The samsungs dont have facebook installed, they have a wrapper app that when clicked goes and downloads and installs the latest version. This means that old versions of fb are not installed all over the show and its easier to depoly images. Disabling it is fine as there is nothing to disable.