How Facebook is ruining sharing | Hacker News Reader

How Facebook is ruining sharing

news.cnet.com

206 pointsnreece70 comments

I've run into the Washington Post link a few times on something shared by a friend that I thought I wanted to read. Once I hit the social reader page, I've bailed ... every time.

You know you can hit the cancel button and it'll take you to the actual article, instead, right?

I had absolutely no idea!

...which is a problem.

I didn't know that. Thanks for the tip. In terms of usability, it's a deceptive way to handle opting out of installing their app. A news agency resorting to deception to promote their content ... just what I hope for from someone claiming to be an authority in something.

To be fair, it's Facebook promoting this interface and the news agencies / publishers just being too spineless to say no (dwindling readership and such) and/or really believing it will get more people to read their stuff.

I discovered that by accident. It's nice once you know about it, but the "cancel" label is very poor --- it reads much more like "forget about even trying to read this article" than "read the article and to hell with the signup page".

FYI, even if you click cancel it will still advertise you to your friends ("Rob uses this app" in the bottom left corner of the signup popup). Which seems pretty questionable.

I verified with two other friends--I saw both of them in the "so and so uses the app" section and neither of them had ever added the app (only "cancelled").

I hope that's just a bug.

Facebook has used my profile picture in the past to advertise their "connect with email to find more friends". I will NEVER give Facebook my credentials for ANY of my email accounts.

It annoys me though that my likeness has been used in an attempt to get "my friends" to also type in their credentials.

why do i have to "install an app" to be re-directed to an article? these tactics just seem to me as "creative" ways to get people to agree to have more information about them published. I've yet to say "yes" to any such prompt on Facebook.

I didn't know about cancel. I guess the issue is why do we have to find out this way? It's not an expected behavior and that's going to piss a lot of people off. So there's an easy way to get what you want, it's staring you in the face, but we all ignore it because it looks as though it isn't going to do what we want. Not a good design but then again design is about choices and maybe they figured it's worth it to make people learn the hard way.

Heh, it's almost like Facebook learned something from all those spammy apps.

Yep, I'm the same way. Installing Apps was a novelty at one point, now I won't install anything. I've started using Facebook less and less.

Another deceptive tactic? Apparently my account has "low security". So I go in and see what my settings are adjusted to. Everything how I like it (private). But the "low security" warning sits there, in perpetuity, until I give Facebook my phone number, apparently.

That's because it considers your account low-security until you enable two-factor authentication, which having a phone with SMS allows. The number isn't to fill out your profile, and has nothing to do with privacy settings. Facebook takes security very seriously, and it would be better for everyone's safety if everyone set up two-factor, just like having everyone around you vaccinated is better for you.

>The number isn't to fill out your profile

That may not be the stated purpose, but i am 100% certain they use it for profiling purposes aswell.

Two-factor via SMS is for dumbphones. Facebook should support RFC 4226 to allow smartphone apps to generate codes without communicating with Facebook.

They should support RFC 4226, as google does, but they still need to support SMS with the size and diversity of their userbase. Google offers SMS as well.

How long before every facebook user has a device that can do RFC 4226? I hope soon, but kind of doubt it'll happen this decade.

The number isn't to fill out your profile, and has nothing to do with privacy settings.

At least as far as users are concerned, right? I mean, it's not not being used to fill out your profile on the backend, either.

I guess that's one way to look at it, but your analogy is flawed. I'm mostly unaffected by anyone else having their account hacked, whether or not they've implemented two-factor authentication.

But I really believe they just want my phone number. Why do they tell me the security is "low"? Why not "medium"? What if I don't have a cell phone? Without giving them a number, I guess I live on a low security site? It's FUD, just like those popups telling me my security settings on my PC are "low", or that I have a "virus".

Same here. It's basically the equivalent of spam to me now.

Same here .. i just want to click the link and be taken to the article to read it.

This is a behavior we all are used to. Why make something simple more complicated for your users???

For me i just highlight the title of article and go thru google to read it.

It should really be called tracking instead of frictionless sharing. It's not the user acting, it's the sites observing/tracking the user (with consent).

Haha you're right. Maybe we should request they change the name. Imagine Zuckerberg at F8 giving a keynote on the this great new feature... "It's called Frictionless Tracking! It makes it really easy for us to collect all kinda of personal information on you which we'll keep in a file and later use to try to sell you things. The best part? We tell all your friends about everything you do! Everything from the LOLCat you just commented on to the article about genital warts you were reading on WebMD about an hour ago. How awesome is that?!"

I'm not making fun of you, I just thought it'd be funny to imagine what it would be like if companies like Facebook were just brutally honest like that.

We tell all your friends about everything you do!

Which, given how much they will then know about you, will introduce social pressures. "You like X, Y, and Z, why haven't you bought widget A or seen movie B yet? I thought we were friendsters!"

This is the third time Facebook does the same mistake. Remember beacon? Remember when apps could publish anything, and when they started over publishing fb instated throttling? Just like the previous attempts they will revert this one within a few months, I m willing to bet on it. Facebook is great for growth but it lacks sophistication in the way they do sharing. Every time they hire a new platform lead, they go over the same mistakes all over again, reinventing the wheel every time.

Theoretically, frictionless sharing makes a lot of sense if the user gives the app explicit permission.

There is an app my friend Joel showd me called If This Then That http://ifttt.com/ that allows apps to trigger frictionless sharing when certain actions are taken. For instance, I might want to only share songs I rate or those I 'star/favorite without the extra "are you sure" dialog.

The app maker/content owner should make it easy for me to set it up. They can create defaults but must allow me to opt out.

Because of this guardian stalking sharing app, I have deliberately never clicked any on the shared links that flooded my FB wall (past tense because I am on a FB break)

It is unfortunate that facebook actions put 'social graph' and page views before their customers. I do not blame them though, when you have 500 million people logging in almost everyday, you tend to believe you can get away with almost anything.

Or if the default was that things were private, and that only specific things become public.

But then you have the same problem of "If nobody sets things to be public, there's nothing to read, so no incentive to be a user".

No. No, it doesn't make sense. I don't care what my friends read - I only care what they think was good out of that. You can't just open up everybody's browser logs and call that viral.

There was a good article a while back about how oversharing is killing staste - http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2011/09/...

Basically, we're caring more about volume of information rather than curation of good information, and when that happens - taste dies.

If you re read what I said I was referring to the frictionlessness (is there a word like that) when you want to do the sharing.

I do not want to see any pop ups when I want to share. Maybe we should differentiate between frictionless sharing and automated frictionless sharing.

I'm sorry, I simply don't see how you expect to be able to share selectively without UI. And unless that sharing UI is embedded in every possible page, you're kind of stuck with a popup. Unless it were a browser feature, I guess. Which doesn't make it not pop up, but makes the popup a little more trustworthy.

Think I get your point. For example, I used to have an app on facebook that shared the songs I loved on Last.fm. Those where very few, maybe 5* a year, so it made sense to auto-share them on facebook.

Edit: *Looked it up and it's more like 30 each year, ops.

Ah! Now I think I see, then - if I have a curated collection somewhere else and want it to share onto Facebook, sure - that makes sense. But you have to curate somewhere; just because some guy I went to high school read an article or listened to a song doesn't mean I want to hear about it.

I believe OoTheNigerian's point is that he likes it when the sharing functionality is rolled up into another thing that you do. Say, every time you rate a song 5 stars, or mark one as your favorite. He'd rather not get a popup asking if he also wants to share it on facebook (but have a config option which says "share my liked songs")

After reading this great piece (http://blog.pinboard.in/2011/11/the_social_graph_is_neither/) one picture comes to my mind regularly: that fb is like meeting and hanging out with your friends in a room with one way mirrors.

That goes for 90+% of all social interactions. What makes you think people want their beliefs and opinions challqenged?

I think you're misinterpreting the meaning of one-way mirror. He means that you're hanging out with your friends while being observed surreptitiously by people on the other side of the one-way mirror (a one-way mirror is reflective on one side, and see-thru on the other, often associated with police interrogation rooms)

I learned not to click on shared articles because of this. Why the hell would I install an app to read a single article?

I've found that if you click "Cancel", it will still take you to the linked article, without actually having the "App" added to your profile.

Edit: added clarification.

Sometimes... the Yahoo app doesn't do that, for example. Personally I just hit cancel, as I will never authorize a Facebook app to do anything, ever. If the article sounds good, I can just go search for it on google and read it 5 seconds later without handing my Facebook API auth to some idiots.

Because Facebook wants to lure 'serious' publishers in its platform. It has worked great for zynga and other games, but once again it will fail for 'serious stuff'. Why doesn't Facebook realize that their future lies in entertainment rathe than news?

I think the two overlap more than you think. There has always been a group of people in society whose entertainment is talking about the news, almost as a form of gossip.

With that being said, while the idea makes sense, the Facebook implementation has fallen flat.

So, I guess I am the only one here who actually likes the new apps? Its interesting to see what people are doing, and I have found interesting articles that I wouldn't have otherwise seen.

The talk about recommendation is missing the point, making this information available to your friends in this way is not recommendation. And people don't see it in that way; I certainly don't. Explicit sharing is still treated differently by facebook, and given more emphasis. Its clear that they realise things that aren't explicitly recommended are less valuable; thats why they now show you this aggregated view of articles read.

It seems a bit weird at first. I'll admit, I initially opted out of sharing, but I'm meaning to change it back now. The 'openness' philosophy of Facebook is often a bit daunting, and they make mistakes because of it, which is worrying, but it does have its upsides as well.

The whole article seems to hinge on the following line: "For every five people who authorize an app, I'd guess five will turn away..."

The author doesn't seem to have any data to back this statement up so I'd put this in the bucket with the rest of the "OMG FACEBOOK" hyperbole that I've been seeing of late.

To add in my personal experiences, I haven't added any of these apps and I'm trying not to. Since this is just a guessing game, I'd wager that the tech community and people who understand the implications of these services would be more hesitant to authorize these apps but Facebook users at large probably don't care and just click through to the article.

Every time I read an article like this I wonder if there is enough demand in the real world for a new social network ...

This poses an interesting question for those of us building apps - would you get more signups to your app eventually if you didn't make people sign up just to view the content? Its theoretically possible that requiring people to authorize your app just to view content will annoy enough people that you'll end up getting lower signups. And of course, the reason for requiring or not requiring authorization is in most cases to get signups.

These authorisations might be acting as a filter. Being an app developer and someone who's read a lot about FB, I'm very wary of authorising anything, whereas someone who's less informed won't give it a second thought.

Basically, these filters are only funnelling people to the website who are more likely to click on ads and fall for scams.

You would not. Permission dialogs are already transparent to 90% of users. It's the equivalent of social peer pressure dynamics that works here, your app is implicitly endorsed by a friendly person.

As a developer who wants to integrate a few new open graph verbs, I'm wondering if this behavior can be bypassed? I don't want a registration wall for people to view our content.

Any developers here know if it's possible to bypass?

Thanks?

I know this puts me in the minority of the HN crowd.. but I really don't care. I click the allow button and get on with my life.

True that. I'm with you, man. I've got my opinions about it and I see everyone's point (which I agree with, incidentally) but when I'm actually using Facebook I just allow whatever and keep moving.

Maybe this backlash isn't as big as some would like us to think. Maybe it's just news fodder to rile up the privacy crowd and people like us on HN. The heavy users are mostly high school kids who don't give a damn and allow anything. That's the future, I guess.

I'm usually fairly permissive - but I've been really annoyed by the social reader stuff. I'd normally have no problem authing the Washington Post to allow login or whatever, but I do not want them broadcasting every time I read a story. Mostly because I want to personally curate my feed, and always have. Maybe I'll get over that, but I kinda doubt it. Spotify and all games have this problem too, and even though I know it will only be showing up in activity box (for the most part) I've still greatly curtailed my listening. The privacy thing is secondary, but still important, I'd just not read about X embarrassing thing on the WP (which I most likely already don't).

So, you only read the most non-controversial articles and you don't have private information that you'd rather not share with your community, about the links you've visited? Do you put your browser history in a public area? Please don't make the assumption that everyone is living an open life or doesn't want their 'friends' (work colleagues, extended family) to know every aspect of their online personality.

>So, you only read the most non-controversial articles

I don't frankly give two craps if someone knows what public news articles I read. Why would you?

>...about the links you've visited? Do you put your browser history in a public area?

Except that's not what's happening here. So.. your point was what?

Here are some statistics by FT how seamless sharing is affecting newspaper top stories: http://blogs.ft.com/fttechhub/2011/11/unexpected-impact-face...

I think Molly could fairly blame the apps and not Facebook. This flow (prompting for permission before a user accesses your app) is completely optional. You can still use the new graph APIs and not do this.

In my opinion, this flow makes a lot of sense when the page the user lands on is going to be completely uninteresting without their info. For example, if the page is going to show you a visualization of your friends' birthdays. However, I think it's overkill if you're just using it to grab permission to auto-share what they do.

The apps can choose... I think these apps are choosing incorrectly.

IMHO, the WaPo's Social Reader is interesting because it effectively reinvented a product the Post already had — Trove — in a way that was more effective.

What I think will happen is that Facebook will double back in a couple of months and refine what becomes frictionless and what gets friction. If they find ways to make "frictionless" a little less invasive, it becomes a more-useful tool. Saw a mention of ifttt in the thread … Facebook needs to do a bit of that.

Something I'm starting to notice is I'm spending less time actually browsing Facebook. I still check my notifications several times a day to see if anything pertains to me, but I don't scroll through my newsfeed or peoples' pages as much. I log in, check messages, respond, and dip out.

If they start to spam the notifications too, it's over. (Nick read a story on Washington Post that we think you would like!)

I'm done. Just deleted all my content that is not fed via twitter anyway. I hadn't logged in for weeks and this was the last straw.

You can turn off all that bullshit. I had no idea what the OP was talking about because I have always had it turned off. I'm not sure the exact setting (they seem to always change the wording), but I logged in and in privacy settings for Apps, Games and Websites I have "You have turned off all platform apps, games and websites.". I have no instant personalization and I don't see anyone else's. I've also hidden pretty much every app from appearing in my feed, so all the game/poll notices aren't there either.

I also use Facebook Disconnect, which works to get out all the widget clutter.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ejpepffjfmamnambag...

It's crazy that you have to go to such lengths to not be harassed, but at least those lengths are there. That Facebook keeps making the same mistakes is a good sign that as a whole they just don't get it. It should prove interesting how it all shakes down.

What is worse is that even if you don't have the app and if you share something from say The Guardian, Facebook will take readers to install that app. I tried adding the link in a comment, again the same.

I've been blocking these apps as they appear in my news feed. I have no interest in finding out what stories my friends were tricked into sharing.

Don't think anyone has mentioned here that the Yahoo news app is a lot worse as it also wants access to your email address.

Actually I've never seen one of these. Maybe my friends are less annoying than this woman's?

Am I missing something, or can't you simply not give these apps permission?

So is this a growing pain or a sign that Facebook will soon fall? This reminds me of back when search engines were just full of keyword stuffing related spam or when MySpace turned into a hangout for creeps and everyone's profile looked like a GeoCities site from 1997.

Frictionless sharing is good in theory but the execution is annoying and the posts it generates are not relevant to you more often than not. The way I see it they can go in one of two directions: they can tell the collective user base to suck a fat one and "get used to it, you'll learn to like it" or they can modify frictionless sharing in a way that decreases annoyances like app installs and only shows you stuff that's relevant to what you want to see. That way they can move forward with this cool idea and just perfect it instead of back pedaling and looking somewhat bad.

Facebook already has the capability to do so much more than what it seems on the face of it. I wish I remembered the link but they have this piece of JavaScript that can show you who you've been Facebook stalking. To me that's impressive, maybe I'm kind of an a,after for thinking that way. The point is that they have the tools and the skill to. Perfect the frictionless system just like Google was able to rid itself of spam for the most part and become known as the one search engine that provided truly relevant results. Let's hope they go that way. I don't really like Facebook but I wish them success anyway.

The Guardian link situation is scaring some of my non-tech friends who have no idea what is happening, and why their read links are showing up for the rest of the us to read. That and the fact that more spam is showing up (a male friend was embarrassed last week when it showed a pornographic link on his page, though perhaps his wife was more embarrassed and none of them knew how to make it go away so I flagged it for them). I feel I've become something of a watcher on my friend's pages lately and providing advice on how to protect them - I've even gone so far as to create a fake account so I can monitor for them what is public and what isn't (they take comfort in my screenshots that their posts are actually private). It really is getting to the point where facebook has to address this properly or many of us are going to bail.

Everyone is entitled to their opinion, including the CNET author. As for myself, the only friction I see in sharing is Facebook itself. Beyond collecting a useful list of email addresses of people I know, they are not providing a service that I need, they are just a man in the middle, intercepting everything they can.

Given the ability to forgo having to let users opt-in (what they see as "friction"), what would Facebook do? I think it's obvious. In that regard they are no different than any spammer.

In my opinion, Facebook apps offer much more to Facebook (as they acquire an often elusive opt-in) than they do to the user. The user associates the use of the app with their friend rather than Facebook and the app developer. In this way Facebook gains the user's trust.

It's not much different than dangerous email attachments. Same old trick. Give it any name you want.

I find it ironic to see all the social media buttons on a page criticising social media.

How is it ironic when that is what the article is in favour of over the passive sharing of Facebook's Open Graph? The critique isn't of social media, but the invasive nature of these new passive sharing posts.

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