Hacker News Reader

An unexpected downside of oAuth rears its ugly head.

You can always provide a way for the user to convert oAuth accounts into your own system. No idea why Spotify hasn't done already, this problem has existed on Spotify for many years now.

I mean the loss of trust in the provider is an obvious downside of centralized authentication right?

The “unexpected” part is the loss of trust in Facebook as a provider.

I would argue trusting Facebook with anything was obviously going to end in tears but I admit I’m not a normal user.

Agree, the problem in regards to spotify is that for a while spotify required facebook for new accounts.

The disconnect that led to that decision is absolutely mind blowing. To make it even more surreal lots of people, even on HN, defended it.

Yeah I just didn’t use Spotify until I could sign up with email. It kind of surprised me they were able to gain as much traction as they did with what I viewed as a user-hostile action right at signup.

Spotify activity in the early days was super prominent in the Facebook activity feed and that weird mini feed they used to have. So I think they probably got more new customers from that angle as they might have lost from the login limitation.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com