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Comment by sp332 | Hacker News Reader

Nope, the JS that Facebook gives people to embed a Like button on their page, sends the URL of the page back to FB without actually being clicked. http://www.zdnet.com/blog/facebook/germany-facebook-like-but...

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It's true that Facebook almost certainly tracks users through the like button, but that is different than what is being talked about here. When Facebook tracks that you read a webpage through a like button, they do not display it in your friends feeds.

While many people reasonably aren't comfortable with Facebook knowing where you're going all the time, it is a very different thing than Facebook sharing that knowledge with all of your Facebook friends.

That feature, the one the original article is talking about, requires you to specifically opt-in before the "Bob read an article about sexual dysfunction" starts showing up in everyone else's news feeds.

So how many of us are concerned about this from a personal privacy point of view, but still have all the Facebook buttons and markup all over our sites?

I'm a little concerned that, as a website operator, I really ought to work with Facebook because it will lead to more PVs because it is advertising my site for me.

But I've been uncomfortable for some time as I watch my friends and my children slowly confuse the web and Facebook. It's easy to see a day when, for most non-techy folks, the web is Facebook.

So, I can close my FB account. But I think, in the spirit of doing the right thing for the world, the web and the future, I also have to take Facebook off my site and face whatever consequences that may bring.

Or am I being a fuddy-duddy old reactionary?

You can implement a "two-click like" button that mostly solves the problem. http://www.heise.de/ct/artikel/2-Klicks-fuer-mehr-Datenschut... (German) Just be sure not to make your non-standard FB button look like the official one because they will get on your back about trademarks. http://adland.tv/content/heise-creates-two-click-facebook-bu...

Having thought about this some more, I have taken Facebook off our site. As a business we may suffer some downside as a result, but I want to (a) protect the privacy of my site's users and (b) be able to hold my head up and say I'm not part of the problem when the revolution comes.

Google Analytics sends URLs to Google on a even larger majority of websites. FB was hardly the one to start this trend.

The different in FB case, that they are not "required" to track URLs so they could of chosen an alternate implementation where sites in-directly served FB scripts through their own servers. And FB would only received a request when someone interacted with their elements.

Google is providing a service to the owner of the website, that helps them track their content.

Google isn't using it to post to a users wall/feed so that advertisers have more keywords to advertise to.

>Google isn't using it to post to a users wall/feed so that advertisers have more keywords to advertise to.

Neither is Facebook. Facebook is not using their like buttons for this feature, it is a separate opt-in feature.

Yes, this is a great idea. 'Passive' like buttons. There's no need (from my POV) for them to be active.

That may be true, but even if it is, it isn't sharing this activity with your friends, that would be facebook doing exactly what google does with their analytics platform/js.

I don't get the freakout people have over fb potentially tracking you through something you can see (the like button) vs google doing it everywhere with something you can't (the analytics js)

The app still has to request 'publish_actions' permissions, which requires an FBConnect dialog.

That URL is being used for customization of Like button, so that on some sites you can see 'Friend A, Friend B and 345 others recommended it'.

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