Hacker News Reader

Comment by gabemart | Hacker News Reader

Webmasters can create static sharing "widgets" that are nothing more than an href to a url which encodes the page to be shared. This doesn't use any javascript and can't be used to track anyone (unless they actually share the page, in which case tracking is unavoidable). This can be done programmatically or with a simple web service (e.g. [1]).

[1] http://www.sharelinkgenerator.com/

View on HN

Heise.de started "two clicks for better privacy" that Bruce Scheiner also uses on his blog. http://www.heise.de/extras/socialshareprivacy/ & https://github.com/panzi/SocialSharePrivacy

This is a great technique, because despite the mood in the echochamber here sometimes (I also have absolutely zero interest in using them), many many users legitimately do want to like things or share things or interact with social widget whatevers at some point on some sites.

Using libraries like this makes that interaction absolutely explicit, with minimal loss of ease of use, which means that nothing is shared until that explicit signal that the user wants to share.

I think you've probably misunderstood.

The mere loading of the widget sends a signal to Facebook that you visited the shoes page. You don't have to interact with the widget for the info to be sent.

Ghostery blocks the widget from loading.

I describe an alternate widget that uses a single link instead of the typical javascript. Loading such a widget sends nothing at all to Facebook, and is untrackable unless clicked by the user.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com