Hacker News Reader

Would a different social login provider be more acceptable? Github for instance? Something or someone that isn't as interested in using your data

Github maybe... I've been more hesitant to use them, as they control a significant portion of open source project's infrastructure, and could generally make a lot of headaches for me. If you don't have a simple email-based signup I'm going to be hesitant to use your site.

What do you imagine GitHub..... doing?

While I'm sympathetic to your viewpoint and to a large degree share it, you are among a vanishingly small minority to not use a site or service just because of social login. 'jfaucett probably is fine sacrificing losing this small minority.

> 'jfaucett probably is fine sacrificing losing this small minority.

precisely. In my experience, this small minority can actually be subdivided broadly into two groups: those with very high data privacy concerns and scammers/spammers. It turns out that in my experience, the high level data privacy concern people have been the vastly smaller of the two groups, so at the end of the day you are sacrificing a tiny fraction of a fraction of potential users while simultaneously removing tons of scammers from your platform. Admittedly, the ratios probably vary depending on the particulars of your pricing models and potential scam vectors that can be applied to your software, also other factors such as local attitudes toward data privacy (my experience has been in the EU). You can also increase sign-ups by a large portion of the data privacy people by simply doing a lot of things to make your services legit i.e. have domain names registered to the real business or contact person, force https, have a high level overview of your terms and services that clearly and succinctly states how you use users data, have a verified https certificate, etc. But in general "social login only" has been so much better for me than mixed or only email logins I really would not want to go back to the alternatives.

Although I don't disagree, I suspect you are driving away a very interesting group of technically literate, even being small.

I can guarantee you no VC or CEO cares about that in 99.99% of cases.

This could easily be seen as a feature and not a bug.

One nuance is whether you offer one or multiple channels. I prefer email registration, but will consider Google or Microsoft logins. I will not under any circumstances use Facebook or Twitter login.

I find myself doing the same thing. There is absolutely zero hope of me clicking "login with Facebook", and between my low likelihood of clicking, and the low likelihood of actually seeing "login with Twitter" - that also never happens.

However, I login with Google all the time.

I have my reasons for these choices and I'm sure many people here share those reasons, and I'm also sure many more don't share those reasons, but the reasons are not important in this discussion.

If you're going to offer social login, then offer at the very least all the major social logins - some really are more acceptable than others, the problem is, everyone's set is different.

> If you're going to offer social login, then offer at the very least all the major social logins

Note that ‘major’ can be different for different countries, regions, markets, product types. So be sure to know your target audience.

I'm the same, if email registration isn't available I'll first greatly reconsider how much I'm interested in what you're offering.

If I'm VERY interested I'll consider google or github or something, no matter how interested I am I'll never use facebook or twitter etc.

I can understand being against Facebook login but why not Twitter? Don't think it's a particularly shady company as far as I'm aware, and you don't have to give the app access to tweet on your behalf.

I'm in this minority as well. I don't want Google, Facebook or Twitter to control my identity on other sites and won't use social login unless something is very tightly tied to a given social platform.

Is it actually a small minority?

How do you test this? I'm not sure how to test this though as there are flow-on effects on preventing registrations ie less word-of-mouth.

I was like you, until I looked at my unique login/pwd combinations.... there were so so many. I can't remember them all, i switch computers (I'm a teacher) a lot. Logins are so stupid, I've been able to look at my laptop to unlock it for years, touch my phone to unlock it.... login and passwords are going so i don't mind using google to log in for a few years while the rest of the world catches up.

For students google log in is essential. Having to create an account, then click a link in an email, then use a site is too hard. It takes too much time and there are too many points of failure. So 99% of comp sci teachers are choosing sites with social logins. So future programmers are all going to prefer them.

> For students google log in is essential. Having to create an account, then click a link in an email, then use a site is too hard.

Where the hell do you teach comp-sci?!

Have you ever taught a class of 35? About 5 of them can't even log into a computer - forgotten passwords, broken mouse, a locked computer that needs a reboot.

What email have they entered? School or personal? Or their apple email?

>I can't remember them all

I can't remember most of my passwords, if I could that would be a serious security issue. Password managers are a must in this day and age.

So you turn up at a new school, they give you a temporary user name, password. You use this to get into the PC, then you use another teachers password to get into google classroom to read the lesson plan. Then I use my own to get into my work email, then my personal one to get into messenger to talk to my child care dude.

A password manager is just another point of friction.

Please do not take this as a critique, just curiosity:

What type of background brings you to HN? I’m surprised that you find PW managers friction if you are a HN trader. Can you share what you don’t like about PW managers?

Note getting my boss to use a PW manager is like pulling teeth. But she does not have interest in things like HN and a PW Manager could solve some of her it problems almost every week, saving her (and me) time.

I'm a coder, coded for 25 years. Switched to teaching. Password managers are a hack while we wait for passwords to go. Every year I think that this is the last year I'll need passwords, there will be a gadget or something that solves this issue. Never happens.

How does a password manager work on a random PC in a random school? It doesn't solve my issue. So I don't use it.

On my personal PC chrome remembers my passwords, or the camera just recognises me. On my phone the thumb pad recognises me. On my tablet I have to remember the passwords.

How can a password manager log me into my phone, my tablet, my SO's laptop, my kids kindles, my bosses PC, a random tablet at school, etc etc

If you move between devices and live in gmail, google classrooms, facebook, messenger, school intranets, SIMs.NET etc etc etc

Thank you for the detailed explaination. This makes your previous comment much more understandable.

I concur, that password managers are not that convenient when switching between random computers. In those cases, I use my phone as the manager and set easy to type diceword passwords for accounts which require mobility. Not as easy as a native chrome plug in, but (for me at least) I only use a few accounts when using random computers.

Use a password manager! Here's an article to get you set up:

https://leclan.ch/password-managers/

>For students google log in is essential. Having to create an account, then click a link in an email, then use a site is too hard.

A truly withering indictment on these students. When even the simplest, most straightforward of tasks is "too hard" for students, the future is very bleak.

>So 99% of comp sci teachers are choosing sites with social logins.

An equally withering indictment of Computer Science teachers. I would certainly protest loudly if I was forced hand over my personal information to an intrusive, third-party corporation to participate in a class.

ha! I thought like you, then I became a teacher.

Stuff like logins are so inconsequential compared to the rest of the lesson.

On the contrary, I'd argue that the ability to perform simple tasks is a prerequisite to proper education. We are raising a generation of children unable to perform basic tasks.

haha, my students are pretty smart. You have to remember that what we think as cutting edge is still hard work for a kid who's never seen a PC before.

Why not create a Facebook or Google account just for these websites? Or is it the cross domain tracking that is worrying since everyone's sites are tagged?

It becomes a mess to track where you are logged into what. And cross domain tracking.

2 accounts can take care of this. You can have one account for life related things and another one specific for Logins.

I personally don't care. As I have nothing to hide and I trust most of the businesses providing federated logins.

Also, makes life a lot easier. Not only as a developer, but as a user.

> I personally don't care. As I have nothing to hide and I trust most of the businesses providing federated logins.

Sorry, but every time someone says the phrase "I have nothing to hide" I have to roll my eyes at them. How is that 'argument' in times of the recent facebook scandal still a thing?

I know that most people live under a rock, because changing habits is damn difficult and its much easier to make up arguments to support one-selves behaviour than to question and change it, but really these people should start waking up soon.

It seems they are led to the corporate social media butchery where their personality and individuality is taken piece by piece and soled to the highest bidder.

How much has to be taken from you before you recognize that you can be remote controlled by the organizations with power and money?

And will you even have still the will to recognize that and try to change it or will you sedate yourself with the argument that you can trust big brother to watch over you, because he knows best and its so convenient not having to make changes or decisions anymore.

It's too late. If they wanted to, they could know tons of stuff about your life. Nothing you can do about it now. That is also why your answers to "security questions" should not be the real ones.

The question is, whether you can hide your private conversations from now on and the answer is yes.

should be able to use any oauth provider, including github (as long as the service hasnt locked it to just g and facebook. i _do_ hate it hen fcebook login is the only option.

lol because logging into a website with google or facebook really does something valuable for them...