On: Why I'm Done With Social Media Buttons

[Nursie]

I'm done with them because I don't see a reason that facebook should get to track my non-facebook browser activity.

I wish more web designers would think of the privacy violations they subject their users to, rather than just their own page impressions.

[iSnow → Nursie]

Same here, but it is really easy to get rid of both the buttons and the privacy implications via AdBlock, Ghostery or NoScript.

[debt → Nursie]

"...privacy violations they subject their users to..."

You lost me. Which privacy policies are they violating?

[tommorris → debt]

The primary reason you don't find social media sharing buttons on Wikipedia is they violate the Wikimedia Foundation Privacy Policy by loading you up with third-party tracking cookies.

The second reason is they are ugly as sin and most of the community hate them.

A distant third reason is you then have an argument about neutrality and inclusion - which sites do we include and why. Which is an argument nobody seems keen on having given reasons (1) and (2).

[dwaltrip → debt]

Here, the word privacy is referring to a general concept, not the formal policy of an organization.

[benched → dwaltrip]

Rule zero of Hacker News: never make an utterance without some appeal to an established authority.

[Nursie → debt]

The "I don't need facebook recording every website I go to" policy, the "twitter doesn't need to know I visited your blog" policy, etc etc.

More seriously, as others have said, the violation is of my privacy, not of some company's policy. Why did you jump to the other conclusion?

I don't actually have a EULA I make sites sign before I visit, but perhaps I should.

[vacri → debt]

Social media buttons allow the parent org to track your online movements as they're loaded for various things.

[lxm → vacri]

Only when you're logged in.

[nisa → lxm]

No, they can still set cookies for their domain. These got loaded on every request to a button. It's probably not too far fetched to assume that they can correlate that data to your identity through various means. http://www.nikcub.com/posts/facebook-re-enables-controversia...

[prof_hobart → debt]

Are you suggesting that privacy only counts as far as some site's policy defines them?