Not sure about Facebook, but Instagram will definitely ask you for a selfie if you sign-up using a VPN.

Getting a burner phone and account and only tun it on when you want to check the messages is a good start. Do not use any of your real information.

When I left FB a decade ago they didn’t force a phone number for the messenger, thy basically just requested all possible permissions.

there is the fb Lite app, which is mainly for places without good Internet. That one is supposed to not do the same kind of tracking as the main app, at least when it's closed. I can't say the same for messenger though

Provide the least data possible.
Provide the most bullshit data possible.

Good luck !

I've tried 3 time signin to facebook using fake ID, I always ended up ban after a fews days because of "suspicious activities" (probably because of VPN or PiHole). It require a videos selfy to validate I'm not a bot. I tried to create one using genAI but it didn't worked.

Just out of interest: what's on FB messenger that makes all the things you are willing to do to circumvent the grubby data tentacles worth it? I'm just asking because I came to the conclusion not to use FB a while ago and I haven't looked back.

Buy an account at xmrbazaar.com

It's simple, don't use it, use alternatives, like Signal, PixelFed, Matrix, etc.. there are enough, even better alternatives out there. You can't mitigate privacy invasion in Zuckerbot sites, not even with VPN, with the sofisticated tracking and profiling systems they use, more now with AIs. I've blocked all Zuckerbot sites, even the accidental access to any of it's sites and services.

Don't. If the sport teams want to reach you, they gotta do it another way.

Have you tried a compartment app like hermit to launch the messenger dot com website?

Use Signal instead.

Or Graphene OS, second profile, VPN etc. But accept all chats, contacts, meta data or monitored. Sign up process using anon data is getting harder and harder, especially with phone number controls. The hard part isn't going to be running it, in a secure enclave, but signing up with anon data.

Those sports teams and events are using Facebook because they want your data.