How to remove Facebook widgets because .....

[PhilT]

I note with some horror the slow ingress of facebook widgets - taskbar, Kontact, etc., etc.

As someone who loathes Facebook and both its ethics and its anti-open source stance (and all its "like" nonsense and probable NSA connections) and has NO Facebook or Twitter account, I have a question. I don't want my machine contaminated by this unsolicited junk, so, how can I safely remove all applications, widgets, or "convenience " clicks that have anything to do with Facebook? I want a Facebook-free zone here! Thanks for any help -- I don't want to trash my system if there are unknown dependences.

[oshunluvr]

What Facebook things are on your computer and how did they get there? I have a Facebook account and there's nothing on my PC to indicate that. There are icons and a couple of plugin scripts for various programs - Akonadi, Chromium, Kipi, youtube-dl, etc. - and a widget, but I've never launched any of those scripts nor do they appear anywhere in my daily use.

I can't imagine what "unsolicited junk" you're referring to. You can uninstall the widget easy enough. The other things like the scripts can likely be removed manually but at the risk of breaking the associated program. It appears the Facebook API library is a dependency for KDE so you can't remove that. You could write the developers asking to have the library removable in the future but they might not agree. You could also just accept that other people use Facebook and therefore internet programs will continue to provide a way for the users to access their Facebook accounts. It's not like Facebook is going to reach into your computer and force you to do anything nor must you log into Facebook just because a program like your browser has a way to do so. It seems unlikely that a program developer that is writing a program designed to communicate over the internet is going to ignore the possibly single largest social website in the world.

I understand your stance and share it to some degree, but we still have to live in a world with Facebook in it.

One thing you can easily do is block the Facebook domain in your hosts file.