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Facebook Unsocial Reader
- nischalshetty 15y agoCool stuff. What I usually do is click the link and then set the privacy level to "only me" so that no one knows what I'm reading.
- EvilTerran 15y agoIf I see a headline that interests me, I tend to copy-and-paste it to my browser's search box, and find the article that way. Actually, more often than not, I've forgotten about "social reader", so click on the headline -- then, when they try to get me to give them access to my account, re-think whether I can be bothered searching for the article. About half the time, that stupid popup costs them at least one pair of eyes. I agree with the giant text on the link: "Worst. Feature. Ever." It's just such a blatant, obnoxious attempt to manipulate your users.
- logain2006 15y ago"no one" == facebook, the app, the app's owner, 3rd party advertisers.
- mainevent 15y agoAm I wrong in thinking that you can just click cancel and it takes you to the article anyway?
- rradu 15y agoThis doesn't work on Yahoo links, only on Guardian and WaPo links from what I can tell.
- naeem 15y agoSeems to die if I try to open up chat, but otherwise its been solid for me.
- andreasklinger 15y agoMediocre but (afair) working alternative solution. Create a friendlist with no-one (but yourself) And give those apps only stream_publish permission to that friendlist.
- rboyce 15y agoNo need to create a friend list for that - you can just set the visibility to "Only Me" when you first authorize the app.
- negamax 15y agoHas no one noticed that you can set permissions to the app posts. You can set it to visible to only yourself at the time of installation.
- aseemk 15y agoI've noticed it, but I'm still wary of that data entering Facebook at all.
- jrockway 15y agoWhy?
- iamdave 15y agoBecause they've consistently shown they can't be responsible with it. That's why.
- jrockway 15y agoI'm interested in specific examples or theoretical concerns, rather than "I said so." This is HN, not Reddit.
- anonymoushn 15y agoFacebook will disclose to Alice a list of all people who have Alice in their contact list on their phones (and use the Facebook phone app). I was told by Facebook engineers that this is working correctly. HN discussion: http://hackerne.ws/item?id=3145857 http://hackerne.ws/item?id=3145857 There have been other things, but most of them were fixed rather than being called features.
- whatusername 15y agoAs an FYI: the canonical URL is http://news.ycombinator.com http://news.ycombinator.com or in this case: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3145857 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3145857
- lalmalang 15y agomaybe im just paranoid, but a bit wary of installing chrome-ext without a quick perusal of the source. Is this github'ed?
- dylanpyle 15y agoWhether it is or not, chrome extensions are just ZIP files with a .CRX extension - with a quick rename, it should be trivial to unpack and peruse it yourself.
- haberdasher 15y agoYou could look at the source, but it's obfuscated (sorry). Also, it's not github'd (sorry). If it makes you feel any better, a different extension of mine has 7000+ users and no complaints of evil things being done: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/bgonpegbhnjepleakgjdbaepkfedhhnf https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/bgonpegbhnjepleakg...
- nikcub 15y agowrote the same thing when they first released social reader (it has been here on HN): http://github.com/nikcub/frictionless http://github.com/nikcub/frictionless the problem is that they change the HTML elements every few days and it is a pain to keep up with it. I am in the middle of rewriting frictionless to use an external ruleset which will be updated, not requiring the extension to be updated. you can see what we go through to get this to work consistently across loggedin/loggedout users, all the different apps (what you do wont work for all apps) and all the different use cases: https://github.com/nikcub/frictionless/blob/master/webkit/frictionless.safariextension/chrome/content.js https://github.com/nikcub/frictionless/blob/master/webkit/fr... (we also anonymize referral and click data) Edit: to add, i'd be more than happy to merge the efforts and we are definitely seeking contributors. would rather one extension that works all the time than two that don't. we have already put in a lot of time keeping this extension up-to-date since launch with all the changes and updates made by the social readers.
- haberdasher 15y agoThanks Nik. I agree that it makes much more sense to join forces and merge efforts. 1) This extension looks at all wpsocialreader links, so unless they change the URL paths, it should still function. 2) Is your extension still in the webstore? I tried the link in the github repo, but it's 404'ing.
- nikcub 15y agowe took it down from the webstore temporarily so that we wouldn't be adding new users while the extension is in a state of flux. I will email you to work out how we can merge efforts - we have a plan for what we are going to implement in the new version. It would be good to have more eyes on the project and on the social reader keeping it updated. Edit: just realized that I can't find your contact info. can you ping me on nikcub at gmail? I am also nikcub on GitHub - are you on there?
- miggaiowski 15y agoCool, I like this better since I can read the source! Forked it and added support to another app, already filed a pull request. Thanks!
- valgaze 15y agoPosting what articles one reads is a very bizarre feature- waiting for when this bites a political dissident someplace
- Monotoko 15y agoI just highlight the title, right click and select "Search Google" usually... takes me to the same place without giving FB any info. Interesting app, but I'm weary of using Chrome because of the data it gives to Google. (Can't win these days - I just want to browse in peace! D: )
- ominous 15y agoIsn't Chromium = Chrome minus Google?
- jrockway 15y agoNo. Google Chrome is Chromium + closed source components like the PDF reader. Wikipedia has a list of differences here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromium_(web_browser)#Differences_from_Google_Chrome http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromium_(web_browser)#Differen... Both Google Chrome and Chromium let you choose a search engine other than Google when you first start it. The privacy policy is a good read if you want to know exactly what information Google collects: https://www.google.com/chrome/intl/en/privacy.html https://www.google.com/chrome/intl/en/privacy.html My read of this indicates that Google is not tracking what sites you go to, only sites that don't resolve or attempt to feed you a bad version of Google's SSL certificates. And, if you believe that Google is actually tracking the Safe Browsing queries when they say they aren't, you can ask either browser to not check for malware: https://support.google.com/chrome/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=99020&p=cpn_safe_browsing https://support.google.com/chrome/bin/answer.py?hl=en&an...
- gburt 15y agoThanks for this, this whole frictionless sharing/social reader stuff is the worst!
- alphang 15y agoAgreed. Every time I see it I get very angry. It's like seeing software betray your friends. I've had at least five friends who have unknowingly shared their readings on Facebook. A few of them were guys who were reading about sexy gossip and celebrity bikini shots and whatnot. The result was embarrassing and annoying for them.
- switz 15y agoThis is great. I wrote an article[1] on this exact topic after I felt that it was not getting the attention it deserved. [1] http://www.saewitz.com/recently-read-articles-on-facebook http://www.saewitz.com/recently-read-articles-on-facebook
- alanh 15y agoI wrote on it, too: http://alanhogan.com/facebook-pseudo-links http://alanhogan.com/facebook-pseudo-links And aggregated a few (more noteworthy) bloggers’ reactions: http://alanhogan.com/facebook-frictionless-sharing-pushback http://alanhogan.com/facebook-frictionless-sharing-pushback
- alanh 15y agoI understand philosophers like Sarte and Kant would agree that the moral thing to do here is not use a plug-in that lets us nerds cheerily use links generated by an evil feature without harming ourselves (by auto-sharing what we read), but rather choose not to follow such links and to warn our often-unwitting friends that they are auto-sharing content merely by reading it. Because the question is, what is the effect if others were to act like ourselves? One action still rewards these evil social reader / frictionless sharing apps. The alternative helps impede them. I know which world I want to help create.
- homosaur 15y agoIt actually has no effect on the market, it's the same as if I searched for the name of the article in Google. Companies can't tell that I'm using the link for the app or not. I do agree though on discouraging your friends to use these things and I think it's important to point out to people that they are autosharing without really understanding what they are doing.
- alanh 15y agoPet peeve: conjecture stated with the adverb "actually." It’s a guess, man. And I am not convinced. Consider that the traffic for that page is still higher now – a data point in favor of "frictionless sharing" if, say the company is testing randomly enabling it for certain articles. Separately, the fact is now you contributed a page view and perhaps a tiny bit of ad revenue in response to seeing an auto-shared article. It probably does still matter.
- dkarl 15y agoIf an article looks interesting, I usually comment saying, "Sounds interesting; I'm not going to use that social reader app, but I will look up the article later." That lets people know that if they really want their friends to read an article they'll get more bites if they post it as a link. Fewer people using the app does affect the market, and the plugin removes the main disincentive to using it, which is that your friends will ignore the links you post. It's better to raise awareness of that disincentive than to bypass it.
- haberdasher 15y agoFYI - Updated the extension (due to a suggestion from a HN reader) to just do an "I'm feeling lucky" search, so now it's a one-click affair.
- mpvosseller 15y agoWorking great!
- nextparadigms 15y agoSocial might become a bit of a negative word online in a few years.
- prodigal_erik 15y agoThe weird thing is this is so automated that it doesn't even convey any social proof. It's not "articles my friends actually thought were interesting" so much as "linkbait my friends fell for".
- Porter_423 15y agojust a series of nice wallpapers