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I'm usually pretty tolerant of Facebook's more aggressive initiatives, but I've started blocking all of the "frictionless sharing" apps. The user interface they

I'm usually pretty tolerant of Facebook's more aggressive initiatives, but I've started blocking all of the "frictionless sharing" apps. The user interface they present is ridiculous. 1. I see a friend read an article that looks interesting. I click it. 2. Every time I click one of these I'm asked to add the application before I'm allowed to view the link. 3. My options are "ok" and "cancel". The first few times I assumed I couldn't read the article without clicking ok so I just hit the back button. It turns out "cancel" really means "don't add the app, just take me to the link". Without that confirmation dialog (which most people probably blindly click through) this is exactly how social media worms work. Perhaps alert users will click "cancel" the first 5 or 10 times, but eventually they're going to accidentally click "ok" or just give in. Not cool. Plus, why would I want to see articles that friends read, but didn't think were worthy of manually posting about in the first place?

raganwald 15y ago
I tried clicking “Cancel” on an app today, I was returned to FB without reading the article. I won’t bother trying again to discover whether it was a one-off, whether it was just that app, or whether the problem had something to do with whatever I was using to read FB (Flipboard, Facebook for iPad, Mobile Safari, Desktop Safari). It is enough for me to know that regular links always work (even though FB tracks click-through) and “frictionless” links, aren’t.
shaver 15y ago
Yes, you should block apps that you don't want to see. They are (per your reasonable definition) badly behaved, and you should exclude them from your stream. I think that's exactly the behaviour that FB would want, because it ties the utility/economics of those apps to the quality of their user-experience. (Disclosure: I start at FB next week, though I don't have any inside info on this.)
- tlrobinson 15y ago
  It's an ok solution for me, but unfortunately I think most users will just click "ok" so they can see their friend's link without realizing what they're actually agreeing to. I think that's what Facebook wants: "making the world more open and connected"... at all costs. They're constantly pushing the limit of what level of openness users will accept. It's going to backfire.

raganwald 15y ago

I tried clicking “Cancel” on an app today, I was returned to FB without reading the article. I won’t bother trying again to discover whether it was a one-off, whether it was just that app, or whether the problem had something to do with whatever I was using to read FB (Flipboard, Facebook for iPad, Mobile Safari, Desktop Safari). It is enough for me to know that regular links always work (even though FB tracks click-through) and “frictionless” links, aren’t.

shaver 15y ago

Yes, you should block apps that you don't want to see. They are (per your reasonable definition) badly behaved, and you should exclude them from your stream. I think that's exactly the behaviour that FB would want, because it ties the utility/economics of those apps to the quality of their user-experience. (Disclosure: I start at FB next week, though I don't have any inside info on this.)

tlrobinson 15y ago
It's an ok solution for me, but unfortunately I think most users will just click "ok" so they can see their friend's link without realizing what they're actually agreeing to. I think that's what Facebook wants: "making the world more open and connected"... at all costs. They're constantly pushing the limit of what level of openness users will accept. It's going to backfire.