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Comment by mrduncan | Hacker News Reader

Maybe I'm missing something here, but this seems like much ado about nothing. I mean, I get it, if I "like" something then that site now has the ability to leave me messages. I just don't see this as much different than following someone on Twitter - once I follow them, they have the ability to DM me all they want (until I unfollow anyway).

Liking anything lets the owner spam you.

This just sounds like a scare-tactic to me. That's like saying "following anyone lets the owner spam you", or "emailing anyone lets the owner spam you".

I guess the real point here is to only "like" things that you trust. Just as I won't start following shady looking accounts on Twitter or handing out my email address to every website I visit, I won't "like" shady looking websites.

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I certainly wouldn't expect that kind of side effect at all, but maybe it's because I'm used to having a greater degree of control over who gets a claim on a slice of my attention. For me "like" is not a binary concept -- either you like it or you don't. I might like something enough to put it in my bookmarks, but that doesn't necessarily mean I'll want to recommend it to all of my friends or subscribe to its RSS feed. If signaling that I like something will automatically imply "subscribing" to it, then I'd like to be informed about it beforehand.

>For me "like" is not a binary concept

We're not talking about like the English language word we're talking about "like" the Facebook specific action indicating that you wish to be associated with a particular page of content on that site.

See, this is why computer applications keep failing "average" users: "Stupid users, why didn't they RTFM? Had they done that, they would have realized that Facebook's definition of the word 'like' is drastically different from the English language word they use every day."

I think a lot of people don't realise this at all.

It's a random website, it's not the facebook page.

The whole like thing is a massive security and privacy disaster waiting to happen.

The schoolyard comeback is appropriate here:

"I might like it. Doesn't mean I want to marry it."

I also didn't expect this but it doesn't really bother me either. It seems pretty logical to me - if I like something I'd like to have access to more of it.

The concept itself is actually a good one; it's just named wrong. Had they called it "follow" or "subscribe", or even the old name "become a fan", it would have been much clearer.

They do give you the choice to display the button as "Recommend" instead. In my opinion, both "Like" and "Recommend" would be perfectly suitable names for this feature were it not for the ability of those pages to post to your feed thereafter. I think that socially, it's a genuinely good feature.

There was a post on here the other day - basically you hide the like button (opacity 0%) and make it's clickable area the size of the screen. Then if a user clicks anywhere on the page -- you've got them.

yeah I wish I had 100 upvotes for you

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