

Show HN: Facebook Open Graph Redirect Chrome Extension - jodoglevy
http://chronline.posterous.com/introducing-the-facebook-open-graph-redirect

======
nikcub
This is probably the 12th such Chrome plugin we have seen now. We released
ours a couple of days after frictionless sharing was announced.

The extension gets complicated when you attempt to get it working for all
variety of apps, because app developers are constantly updating the DOM to
bypass our filters.

See this previous thread for details when another one of these was announced:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3810897>

see our original project and the code we have so far to getting this to work
with other social apps:

<https://github.com/byoogle/frictionless>

I really wish we could have one project that works in all cases, rather than
12 projects that work in 5% of cases.

We are catching around 50% of cases at the moment with this code:

[https://github.com/byoogle/frictionless/blob/master/webkit/f...](https://github.com/byoogle/frictionless/blob/master/webkit/frictionless.safariextension/chrome/content.js)

but it is moving all the time. I am currently in the process of writing a
generic rule engine that can be updated from outside of the extension (compare
this to just searching on uiconnect.php in links).

Feel free to fork and contribute to existing code (I can't imagine that one of
these previous projects wouldn't have come up if you Google searched).

~~~
jodoglevy
I think one issue with finding projects working on this already is that its
hard to explain the concept to search for. Is this Facebook feature called
"social reader"? Is it called "frictionless sharing?" "Open graph?" Users
don't know how to name the feature in a way to search meaningfully for a way
to block it, and there's no standard name among developers to search for
preexisting efforts to contribute to.

I managed to find the "Unsocial Reader" while searching for previous efforts.
I did not find "Frictionless", maybe because I didn't search for "frictionless
sharing blocker," because that's not a term I thought to use.

In the case of Unsocial Reader, I saw it was doing Google "I'm feeling lucky"
searches based on the title and figured the way I was doing it was more
streamlined for the user because it was actually based on the article URL, and
since my extension searches for a URL specific to Facebook (uiconnect.php) no
changes to the DOM by app developers would bypass the fact that it still has
to go through that Facebook URL.

In terms of cases it covers, it has worked every time I needed it to while I
was on Facebook, but yes that was the extent of the testing I did. I think it
is unfair to claim that all other projects besides your own work in only 5% of
cases, considering the Unsocial Reader has almost 3x the users of Frictionless
and a better star rating in the Chrome Web Store. Also, since a few sites
represent the vast majority of the open graph links on Facebook (ex Yahoo),
blocking their installers is most important to most users.

This was a weekend project of the mentality "I can get 80% of the results with
20% of the effort." It's something I threw together, just to solve my own
problems (with Facebook and with being unable to find a plugin that fixed the
problem). But now that Frictionless has been brought to my attention, I will
certainly look over the source and see if there's a way I can contribute.
Thanks.

------
jack7890
The article says that Facebook forces you to install the publisher's app when
you click one of these links, but that isn't actually true. It's up to the
publisher whether or not they want to prompt for an install to view the
content. This is what Facebook calls authenticated referrals:
<http://goo.gl/CQld3>

~~~
jodoglevy
As far as I know, from working on an open graph app, you can either not prompt
for an install of the app, or require an install of the app. You can't ask for
an install but not require it to see the content.

Unfortunately, a lot of big news sites go with the force method, including
Yahoo.

~~~
fossuser
There is a definitely another subset that prompts you and when you select
Close takes you to the article.

------
altrego99
I would imagine that this can be easily converted into a GreaseMonkey
userscript. Since you have chosen to implement this for Chrome, the question
which naturally comes to my mind is - is it even easier to write these addons
for Chrome than writing an userscript?

Firefox user here, considering to switch for some time.

~~~
jodoglevy
OP here. I have never worked on a GreaseMonkey script before...only used a
Chrome extension because it seemed to fit the project requirements and it was
the first thing that came to mind.

That said, I did find it extremely easy to create a Chrome extension. Really
nice to have access to the DOM straight through javascript. Check out the
source code for this extension...only took a few lines to write the actual
logic

------
munchor
This is very good, thank you! I usually just copy the text and search it on
Google to find the real article.

~~~
buddydvd
My friends and I do the same thing: highlight and google the title of the
article instead of clicking on the link. The funny thing is we all learned to
do this on our own! Quite disappointed to see FB recently added JS code to
prohibit users from highlighting the title of the article (presumably to
discourage users from doing this).

------
citricsquid
Most aren't stupid enough to lose traffic from people refusing to install
their app so if you hit "No" or "Close" most will redirect you to the article
anyway. The alternative is to set it to "only me" in the dropdown on who can
see what you read.

~~~
jodoglevy
OP here. Actually, if you hit No or Close, none of these apps will redirect
you to the article. Not possible with Facebook's current implementation. I
know because I've worked on one of these Open Graph apps for The Duke
Chronicle.

Only possibilities are, when the user clicks the link, to either bring them
straight to the article, or ask them to install the app and if they hit "Yes,"
bring them to the article. Not possible to show the install app dialog box but
not force an install in order to be redirected to the article. I wish it was
though!

In terms of setting it to "only me" for sharing, yes that definitely works.
But you're still giving the app read access to some of your Facebook info, and
many users won't even think to change the setting to "only me" unfortunately.

~~~
sdcooke
The Guardian app (possibly UK only...not sure) redirects directly to the
article if you click No and then remembers that you did that and redirects you
directly from then on. Definitely the best implementation I've seen but I
don't know the details about exactly how they did it.

~~~
melvinmt
It's possible to set your own "cancel url" if you just redirect people
directly to the OAuth flow.

------
thenonsequitur
Whenever I encounter one of these articles, I just google the title. Easy
enough for me.

------
kcbanner
This is great!

------
Albuca
I'm glad to see that this was created! There has definitely been more than one
time where I had a friend who read an article that interested me, hit the
"install app page" and closed the tab.

This is just another example of Facebook wanting to collect more and more and
more data about us.

Ever since Facebook got more and more involved with the "app" fad, I used it
less and less. Currently it tells me when events are, birthdays, and
occasionally I'll browse some friends and see what's new.

Facebook left my focal point of browsing a long time ago, what about you?

~~~
igorgue
"This is just another example of Facebook wanting to collect more and more and
more data about us."

Not really, Facebook already has the data, this is the app trying to get more
data from you.

~~~
rhizome
Exactly. It's not so much "Facebook collecting" as "Facebook giving away" your
data.

How long will it be before people assert rights over their own graph? When
apps like this slurp down your entire Facebook life without compensating
beyond an article read, there's a kind of sharecropping going on.

