> But if you switch to the web app from the native app, now Facebook is tracking all your web usage.

I use this app, which is supposed to run the Facebook mobile site in a separate sandbox from my other browsing.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.danvelazco...

This is the same app I use. No complaints so far.

You can dedicate one browser (say firefox mobile) for FB only and use chrome or Safari for regular web viewing.

So, instead of one app that sandboxes my FB usage, I would be using a different app (a separate browser) to do basically the same. It might work if Firefox is less of a battery hog then FB app.

There's a good alternative to this on Android, namely apps like Tinfoil for Facebook, which are simply convenience webkit wrappers around the Facebook WebView

If you use Firefox Mobile, you can add uBlock Origin to the browser so that it mimics what the desktop browser can do. And remember that you can enable Disconnect rules in uBlock Origin when you're in Advanced mode!

I'm sorry I don't understand how a web app can track ALL your web usage? Wouldn't that apply to using facebook.com on the desktop browser too then?

It does.

https://euobserver.com/digital/131029

That's really interesting. The way I understand tracking cookies is that websites the user visits needs to have some snippet from Facebook on them for that snippet to be able to read the cookie and update it right? And since most sites have the Share on facebook button that's potentially how the tracking cookie is picked up by Facebook.

Yup, that's exactly the behaviour.

Also a reason I deleted cookies, history and saved credentials and just use incognito for FB nowadays. It also stops the habitual browsing that gets you hooked.

I only use Facebook from the desktop, and run Facebook.com in a dedicated app via Nativefier. The beauty of that is that this keeps all cookies and tracking completely separate from my main Safari searches. https://github.com/jiahaog/nativefier