
How Facebook is ruining sharing - nreece
http://news.cnet.com/8301-31322_3-57324406-256/how-facebook-is-ruining-sharing/
======
uptown
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.

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

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vegashacker
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").

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artursapek
I hope that's just a bug.

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GBKS
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).

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billpatrianakos
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.

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rhizome
_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!"

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zerostar07
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.

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OoTheNigerian
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.

~~~
Vivtek
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.

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OoTheNigerian
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.

~~~
gizzlon
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.

~~~
Vivtek
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.

~~~
Woost
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")

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mtrn
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.

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

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torkins
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)

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

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zerostar07
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?

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chillin411
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.

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benjvi
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.

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imjared
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.

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

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JamesNelson
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.

~~~
ticks
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.

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Karunamon
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.

~~~
marquis
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.

~~~
Karunamon
>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?

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

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tlianza
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.

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shortformblog
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.

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artursapek
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!)

~~~
lancewiggs
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.

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jonknee
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...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ejpepffjfmamnambagiibghpglaidiec)

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.

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madiator
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.

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kpozin
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.

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robryan
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.

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hugh3
Actually I've never seen one of these. Maybe my friends are less annoying than
this woman's?

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brown9-2
Am I missing something, or can't you simply not give these apps permission?

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billpatrianakos
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.

~~~
marquis
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.

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1010110101
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.

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

~~~
Hates_
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.

