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Can someone explain why there is a need for the "double-click" solution? Can't one simple have a row of fontawesome-based social media buttons with links to the

Can someone explain why there is a need for the "double-click" solution? Can't one simple have a row of fontawesome-based social media buttons with links to their respective share URLs?

pintxo 7y ago
If you are interested in like etc counts, you need some components retrieving this information from the social network.
- OskarS 7y ago
  I feel like the solution to that is to fetch those numbers server-side and cache them, then present them statically to the user. No tracking, no JavaScript, no cookies, it just works.
  - sergiomattei 7y ago
    With the added inconvenience of having to write all the server side code, set the cron up, have a database or flat file system... The point of the other solution is to save all that.
    - OskarS 7y ago
      Compared to the effort of... you know... building an entire website, this seems like a tiny bit of effort. Is it really that hard to add three lines of server code to serve some content statically? Are we seriously saying that ANYTHING even trivially complex HAVE TO happen on the front-end, even if it means tracking all our users? Come on. Surely there's like a plugin to Django or whatever that could do this. You're serving the dang article from some database with some server logic, after all.
      - sergiomattei 7y ago
        This is a common engineer's problem. You're missing the point. Convenience is a massive selling point. It's the same reason Dropbox is a thing rather than "hurr durr build your own FTP server, it's cheaper and more effective". Sure, it's cheaper. But count the 2 hours you have to spend debugging and making it work, then maintaining the server... Personally, I have other things to spend time on. Things like, you know, building a product, rather than maintaining a contraption that fetches social stats from the very convoluted social APIs. Ever tried to get your Instagram follower count via their API? Good luck doing that without access tokens or some hack.
        OskarS 7y ago
        I get the point, but I don't think the analogy holds. Dropbox is a consumer product, so of course convenience counts for a lot. But using Dropbox on your personal computer doesn't expose anyone (except maybe yourself) to being tracked by advertising and social media companies when they don't want to be. This is maybe just me, but I believe that as engineers, we have a duty to consider ethical ramifactions of the things we are building. Saying "I'm going to do the easy solution, and I don't care about what kind of tracking I'm exposing my users to" shouldn't be acceptible behaviour any more.
        sergiomattei 7y ago
        We do have a duty to consider the ethical ramifications of what we're building. But I won't spend hours of engineering time building a share button system because there's other priorities. Say spending that time building a "delete account" button. There's other more relevant ways to build privacy conscious features than to focus on a share button. Also, you underestimate share button providers by saying they aren't a consumer product. Your average WordPress user doesn't know (or care) about building share buttons.
  - jsgo 7y ago
    I ask as someone who legitimately doesn't know (don't use them so haven't read), but does that violate the various social networks' dev terms? I've heard that Facebook and the like won't agree to you capturing Facebook data (messages, posts, etc.) in such a manner. Not sure if metrics are fine or what.

Can someone explain why there is a need for the "double-click" solution? Can't one simple have a row of fontawesome-based social media buttons with links to their respective share URLs?

pintxo 7y ago

If you are interested in like etc counts, you need some components retrieving this information from the social network.

OskarS 7y ago
I feel like the solution to that is to fetch those numbers server-side and cache them, then present them statically to the user. No tracking, no JavaScript, no cookies, it just works.
- sergiomattei 7y ago
  With the added inconvenience of having to write all the server side code, set the cron up, have a database or flat file system... The point of the other solution is to save all that.
  - OskarS 7y ago
    Compared to the effort of... you know... building an entire website, this seems like a tiny bit of effort. Is it really that hard to add three lines of server code to serve some content statically? Are we seriously saying that ANYTHING even trivially complex HAVE TO happen on the front-end, even if it means tracking all our users? Come on. Surely there's like a plugin to Django or whatever that could do this. You're serving the dang article from some database with some server logic, after all.
    - sergiomattei 7y ago
      This is a common engineer's problem. You're missing the point. Convenience is a massive selling point. It's the same reason Dropbox is a thing rather than "hurr durr build your own FTP server, it's cheaper and more effective". Sure, it's cheaper. But count the 2 hours you have to spend debugging and making it work, then maintaining the server... Personally, I have other things to spend time on. Things like, you know, building a product, rather than maintaining a contraption that fetches social stats from the very convoluted social APIs. Ever tried to get your Instagram follower count via their API? Good luck doing that without access tokens or some hack.
      - OskarS 7y ago
        I get the point, but I don't think the analogy holds. Dropbox is a consumer product, so of course convenience counts for a lot. But using Dropbox on your personal computer doesn't expose anyone (except maybe yourself) to being tracked by advertising and social media companies when they don't want to be. This is maybe just me, but I believe that as engineers, we have a duty to consider ethical ramifactions of the things we are building. Saying "I'm going to do the easy solution, and I don't care about what kind of tracking I'm exposing my users to" shouldn't be acceptible behaviour any more.
        sergiomattei 7y ago
        We do have a duty to consider the ethical ramifications of what we're building. But I won't spend hours of engineering time building a share button system because there's other priorities. Say spending that time building a "delete account" button. There's other more relevant ways to build privacy conscious features than to focus on a share button. Also, you underestimate share button providers by saying they aren't a consumer product. Your average WordPress user doesn't know (or care) about building share buttons.
- jsgo 7y ago
  I ask as someone who legitimately doesn't know (don't use them so haven't read), but does that violate the various social networks' dev terms? I've heard that Facebook and the like won't agree to you capturing Facebook data (messages, posts, etc.) in such a manner. Not sure if metrics are fine or what.