I use another browser on my phone for fb, and it's the only thing I use that browser for. This is amazing! I can finally read all of the messages I had without installing their app. Thank you so much for sharing that!!

F-Droid has quite a few open-source wrapper apps around facebook's mobile site which improve usability and isolation.

Except only seeing 4-5 messages from an active conversation at once on the basic site is basically unusable.

messenger.com also works well on the desktop to chat and avoid the newsfeed.

Unfortunately it redirects to the app/play store on mobile, and has a terrible layout if you force desktop mode.

I think a good enough compromise for me is to only use the messenger and contacts, and avoid the newsfeed/posts/pages.

That's exactly what I do. I only use messenger.com and the fb messenger app. My friends warn me when there's something of interest on one of our college groups, but apart from that I don't go to the main site at all.

I heard somewhere that version of FB was going to be depreciated at some point?