4 ms·

All these open graph data tags (!) and half of them redundant. I’m gonna be the one to complain about it here. Why are we adhering to a proprietary format by f

All these open graph data tags (!) and half of them redundant. I’m gonna be the one to complain about it here. Why are we adhering to a proprietary format by facebook when equivalent meta tags exists. e.g. why is og:description a thing when we have <meta name="description"> and why specify og:title when <title> is literally the only contented tag required by the HTML standard (so all websites are required to have one). This reminds me of a post from yesterday: “We were promised Strong AI, but instead we got metadata analysis”[1]. And a poor one at that indeed. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26941332 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26941332

Mauricebranagh 6y ago
Because when someone (or our social media team/agency) shares one of our pages on FB we want it to look nice.
- runarberg 6y ago
  Then a follow up question: Why are the scrapers on FB, Twitter, etc. so dumb? Why can’t they fall back to <title> if <meta name="og:title"> is missing? Why is it my job to make things look nice on their platforms, when all the metadata they require is already there?
  - Mauricebranagh 6y ago
    Optimal Titles are different lengths for different use cases for FB and Twitter ideally you want a call to action shorter title as compared to a longer optimised page <title>
    - runarberg 6y ago
      It still begs the question: What about the—in my experience—more common use case where they are the same (i.e. current title and description is sufficient for social shares)? Here is an example of a discord server refusing the expand the site description and title on one of my sites[1], just because there is no og:title and og:description (even though I provide both <title> and <meta name="description">). All I can take from this is either: a) Social media companies are bad at (or don’t care about) implementing common sense features, or b) Facebook is actively and aggressively pushing their own proprietary format over established standards. In either case it is bad. 1: https://forums.online-go.com/t/random-starting-position-flexible-komi/35771/19?u=runarberg https://forums.online-go.com/t/random-starting-position-flex...
      - collinmanderson 6y ago
        "og:title" falls back to <title>. My <title> tags include the title of the website _and_ the title of the page. I put _just_ the page title in "og:title". "og:image" has no standard alternative. The rest are usually not needed. og:description falls back to meta description just fine.
lenkite 6y ago
I wish there was a metadata tag that could prevent sharing on social media platforms.
- pgcj_poster 6y ago
  What if you set og:image to a female-presenting nipple?
- procombo 6y ago
  You used to be able to prevent sharing by blocking their "thumbnail generator" requests via firewall. Or block entire range such as "2a03:2880::/32". I haven't looked into this method's feasibility in years though. I imagine there are much better ways they protect outbound clicks from their apps these days.
- earthboundkid 6y ago
  <meta name="robots" content="noindex">
heywherelogingo 6y ago
All your content are belong to us.
nodex-alex 6y ago
" why is og:description a thing when we have <meta name="description"> and why specify og:title when <title>" ..... Because facebook/twitter/linkedin have different ways to display information and sometimes what's inside the description (for SEO purposes) is NOT the same as what you want displayed on a social media platform or other outlet for your content! <title>, <meta name="description" ...> nearly always get used to optimise for Google and not the end user of a social media platform.

Mauricebranagh 6y ago

Because when someone (or our social media team/agency) shares one of our pages on FB we want it to look nice.

runarberg 6y ago
Then a follow up question: Why are the scrapers on FB, Twitter, etc. so dumb? Why can’t they fall back to <title> if <meta name="og:title"> is missing? Why is it my job to make things look nice on their platforms, when all the metadata they require is already there?
- Mauricebranagh 6y ago
  Optimal Titles are different lengths for different use cases for FB and Twitter ideally you want a call to action shorter title as compared to a longer optimised page <title>
  - runarberg 6y ago
    It still begs the question: What about the—in my experience—more common use case where they are the same (i.e. current title and description is sufficient for social shares)? Here is an example of a discord server refusing the expand the site description and title on one of my sites[1], just because there is no og:title and og:description (even though I provide both <title> and <meta name="description">). All I can take from this is either: a) Social media companies are bad at (or don’t care about) implementing common sense features, or b) Facebook is actively and aggressively pushing their own proprietary format over established standards. In either case it is bad. 1: https://forums.online-go.com/t/random-starting-position-flexible-komi/35771/19?u=runarberg https://forums.online-go.com/t/random-starting-position-flex...
    - collinmanderson 6y ago
      "og:title" falls back to <title>. My <title> tags include the title of the website _and_ the title of the page. I put _just_ the page title in "og:title". "og:image" has no standard alternative. The rest are usually not needed. og:description falls back to meta description just fine.

lenkite 6y ago

I wish there was a metadata tag that could prevent sharing on social media platforms.

pgcj_poster 6y ago
What if you set og:image to a female-presenting nipple?
procombo 6y ago
You used to be able to prevent sharing by blocking their "thumbnail generator" requests via firewall. Or block entire range such as "2a03:2880::/32". I haven't looked into this method's feasibility in years though. I imagine there are much better ways they protect outbound clicks from their apps these days.
earthboundkid 6y ago
<meta name="robots" content="noindex">

heywherelogingo 6y ago

All your content are belong to us.

nodex-alex 6y ago

" why is og:description a thing when we have <meta name="description"> and why specify og:title when <title>" ..... Because facebook/twitter/linkedin have different ways to display information and sometimes what's inside the description (for SEO purposes) is NOT the same as what you want displayed on a social media platform or other outlet for your content! <title>, <meta name="description" ...> nearly always get used to optimise for Google and not the end user of a social media platform.