
Facebook And Digg Are Stealing Content, Traffic, And Revenue From Publishers? - VizionQuest
http://tomuse.com/digg-diggbar-facebook-content-theft-traffic-money-publisher/
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kwamenum86
About the page view argument: this article shows a lack of understanding about
the HTTP request. The browser does not add additional headers to a request
indicating that a page is loading in an iframe. Therefore loading a page in an
iframe has the same effects (from a traffic standpoint) as loading the page
normally.

About the ads argument: Eh...maybe. I work on content-based websites everyday
and a lot of thinking goes into ad placement.
Digg/Facebook/Stumbleupon/whoever else are altering the _presentation_ of
these content sites and essentially placing ads on every site a user visits
through their pages. Maybe that is the cost of having your content promoted on
these sites. A 20 px toolbar won't affect most sites although it does look
unprofessional and sloppy. At the end of the day, the content publishers have
the right to control the presentation of their content and I would expect many
to just break these toolbars using js. To my knowledge the top.location hack
can't be stopped...believe me. Whether, as a content publisher, you support
the toolbar doesn't matter. If you are in support of it you don't need to do
anything otherwise you can insert a little js on your site and call it a day.

~~~
jrockway
_To my knowledge the top.location hack can't be stopped...believe me._

I did a quick experiment. If you set top = null, then top.location stops
working.

~~~
jrockway
It turns out that I am wrong:

<http://gist.github.com/90381>

~~~
kwamenum86
Were you able to get it working in any browsers or did you discover it does
not work at all later? That would be a huge loophole if it worked in any
browser under any circumstances.

~~~
jrockway
I only tried Firefox.

Basically, you can set top = null in the parent page, and it behaves as you
expect -- there is no magic going on. But "top" gets reset for the iframe.

I didn't try anything more evil than that, though. I think if the parent
script did something like "while(1){}", it could "starve" the iframe of CPU
time, and it would never have the chance to change the URL.

At that point, though, I think I would just implement the toolbar as browser
chrome.

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knightinblue
I'm pretty sure that pages loading in the diggbar iframe still count towards
your pageview numbers (your internal analytics will pick it up). Not to
mention the fact that your ads get displayed, allowing ppl to still click
them.

The whole 'Digg is making money off your content' argument is moot. They have
always made money off your content. There was never anything original on digg.
They've just decided to take it to a whole new level. Now if someone comes up
with data that shows that the diggbar lowers your revenue (which as of now, I
don't think it does) while raising theirs, then it's time to grab the
pitchforks and torches to go pay kevin rose a visit.

P.S. I just realized, another difference is with 3rd party traffic estimates.
Comscore and quantcast probably won't count those iframe pageviews. Compare
that with the traffic lost by blocking the diggbar (assuming yours is a
'diggable' site to begin with)

------
jrockway
_Steals traffic - Digg doubles its traffic by showing your content in its
frame and redirecting the shortened urls back to Digg instead of to your
site._

When I share a site on Twitter or whatever, I usually link to the social news
site instead of the site directly. I want my karma, and I want all the
comments in one place. So toolbar or not, you aren't getting linked directly.

Also, this is not stealing. This _gives you_ traffic that you wouldn't have
had otherwise.

 _Steals links - by creating shortened urls that are redirect to Digg first
and foremost_

Not stealing. Want some cheese with that whine?

 _Steals content - your content is essentially being hosted by Digg through
it’s framing structure._

Completely wrong, unless you think that web browsers are stealing your
content. I mean, on Macs there is that Apple logo above your page, and in
Firefox, there is a Firefox logo! Oh noes! (What's the difference between a
Digg toolbar and browser chrome? I certainly don't see one.)

 _Steals potential revenue - by either blocking your content/ads or by
stealing ad impressions/clicks._

Completely false. I use AdBlock anyway, so no need to worry. Nobody sees your
ads.

 _Enables others to justify framing as well - then we are right back to where
we started in the late 1990’s when websites were nothing more than frames
within frames and lawsuits are handed dished out like candy._

"Handed dished"? Citation needed.

Citation needed for everything, in fact.

