

LikeBtn – ‘Like’ button for anonymous voting on websites - nicolly
http://www.likebtn.com/en/

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grey-area
For something as simple as a like button, surely they could just include a
unique image url wrapped in a link, and generate the image on demand to update
numbers?

I do find this trend of including third party js on websites worrying. At
present I've got twitter js for feeds on a few websites, and even that worries
me, but it seems every website now wants me to include their js for a like
button or any other service. It's simple for them to update, track users etc,
and I see the attraction, but it's also incredibly dangerous if this practice
proliferates. Soon we'll be including js for tens of sites, not all of which
are perfectly secure, and if any one of them is hacked, it means you're
serving malignant code on your domain to every user.

While js is sandboxed, it has full access to any data displayed or entered on
a page, and can trigger silent transmission of that data to other servers. So
by including the js you're trusting that website never to be hacked, and never
to misuse your users' data. I'm waiting in trepidation for the big scandal
when a large site with js served all over the web is hacked, and that js is
used to silently record millions of logins and details over a few hours/days
before it is discovered.

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michaelmior
I find these two claims together a bit odd.

"It is well known, that social buttons effect your site’s overall loading
time."

"Like Button is loaded asynchronously and does not slow down your website."

All popular services I know of also load their social buttons asynchronously,
and just because it doesn't block rendering, doesn't mean it doesn't slow
things down.

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farolino
This is very confusing from a user experience point of view. Users will expect
this to 'Like' the page on Facebook which will either put them off clicking it
(if they don't want it to appear on Facebook) or not give them the result they
expect (if they do want it shared on Facebook).

IMO very few will spot that it is an anonymous custom replica.

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tuananh
To me, putting like button on my website is only to spread the site/article on
social network. A likes this -> friends of A will see that article's link as
well..

Plus, as someone has already pointed out, "How do you ensure dis/likes are
unique if it's anonymous?"

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MichaelApproved
> How do you ensure dis/likes are unique if it's anonymous?

Does it really matter? Who is going to try and "game" your like count by
deleting cookies or other such methods?

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jchapron
Yourself ?

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PavlovsCat
If you are the only one to gain from gaming the system, you can ensure it's
not gamed by not gaming it. If you can't resist that, nobody can help you xD

But what about vandalism and trolldom, right?

~~~
jchapron
Sorry, I thought my answer was more self-explicit than it is. I just thought a
lot of people would simulate a high number of "likes" on their articles for
added credibility or whatever ("hey 3000 likes on this little button, a lot of
people must think this guy is important")

~~~
likeclockwork
It's your own website though, you can already put any lies you want on there.

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frakkingcylons
Seeing that the 'Like' action is triggered with 'LikeBtn.vote(1, 0)', Python
and Splinter/Mechanize/Selenium will get you a working 'Like' script in a
minute or two. But hey, that's just a trade-off with anonymous features like
this.

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basicallydan
If this is anonymous and can have a high degree of reliability in uniqueness
it's pretty awesome. Either way though it's still nice for those of us who
want to use the Like mechanism without being hooked into FB/G+.

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daemon13
Nice idea, but who is behind this? What company, team or person?

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frankblizzard
good work. what is really annoying though is that the "would you like to
share" popup stays open until I close it, especially when I hit multiple
buttons on the page and these popups are all over the place. maybe think about
a timer or close all the others when opening a new one.

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chrj
You should buy yourself an SSL certificate and serve the widget using https as
well.

~~~
CalinBalauru
Do you have a good suggestions for buy this certificates, I always struggle
buying one that is acceptable (affoortable) for a startup.

~~~
arnehormann
[http://www.startssl.com/](http://www.startssl.com/) \- one year free
certificate (renewing is free, too) with a distance of one to the root CA.

~~~
dan1234
It's worth noting that those free certificates are for non-commercial use.

Their commercial certs are pretty good value if you need one.

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oleganza
Something to consider: instant bitcoin donation is both quite anonymous and
can't be duplicated at will. And people can put their money where their mouth
is. In fact, this already exists as "bitcoin tip" on Reddit.

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PavlovsCat
How do you ensure dis/likes are unique if it's anonymous? Or is that simply a
trade-off that can't be avoided?

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dylz
You can't even ensure likes/dislikes are unique with FB and G+.

~~~
tuananh
well at least it's harder if you were to do that with FB and G+. 1
like/article per Facebook account.

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nwh
There's hundreds of people offering "like" services, so clearly you can't
trust them for anything serious.

