Why Facebook's Seamless Sharing is Wrong | Hacker News Reader

Why Facebook's Seamless Sharing is Wrong

readwriteweb.com

51 pointsllambda6 comments

These days I see lots of links from all kinds of "social readers" in my Facebook feed.

A lot of them are actually interesting, but that does not mean I want to authorize the app and start broadcasting my every move online.

Here is what I do: copy / paste the headline into Google and find the article on lots of sites. The great benefit in addition to avoiding the Facebook Big Brother is to read comments from a variety of communities.

It is hard to eliminate Facebook from my routine completely, but I am surely not going to allow them to be more nosy than they already are.

PRO TIP: Install Facebook Disconnect to reduce the amount of tracking they can do

[1] http://disconnect.me/facebook

[2] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ejpepffjfmamnambag...

I clicked one, looked at what permissions it wanted, and had an idea! You can set the default sharing settings while giving permission, so I simply set it to only share with myself! That way I can click the links, read what i like, and only I will see the links on my wall.

Did that too after I became annoyed by the Googling of the headlines in Facebook just to avoid the app. Yesterday I discovered that pressing cancel will get you to the article, so I deleted the app.

Nonetheless, it's still a nuisance to click on an article headline and not get there right away.

I'm using something I think someone here referred me to called Ghostery... http://www.ghostery.com/

I think we are slowly but surely walking into an era where any and every activity we do on the web will by default be broadcast to a (smaller) or bigger audience.

The government spies or NSA do not need to track users any more. Privacy is dead because websites like Facebook are now setting an exception of no privacy and lots of people are blindly falling for it.

Facebook's seamless sharing has lot of privacy implications. There have been many instances where I have read something and felt that it was inappropriate to broadcast to my network. The value of sharing comes from sharing things which we feel are interesting or important. This behavior of sharing everything by default means that we will miss out on the quality stuff even more. When everything is shared, the good articles miss out from getting attention. Seamless sharing is reducing the overall value of Facebook.

On the other hand, I do like Ticker. It gives Facebook a real-time feel though it gives away the fact that you are online even if you are offline on Facebook chat.

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