5 ms·

> Step 1 – Log-in with Facebook to activate your 3 month testing service. Thanks. No.

by pdknsk 14y ago

niggler 14y ago
What's with this trend of companies and startups requiring customers to sign up with Facebook? Especially for developer and technical resources, for which it seems there's a healthy level of dissociation from Facebook.
- acabal 14y ago
  What's worse is developer-level services that require Twitter to sign up, or sometimes even Github. Not all developers (see: me) have a Twitter or Github account.
  - danielgrieve 14y ago
    The services are trying to provide you with easy access so you don't have that barrier of creating "yet another account". Depending on the service they're offering they'll pick a reasonable third-party that offers oAuth integration. I'd say that GitHub auth for a service aimed at developers is a reasonable assumption to make.
    - kijin 14y ago
      The process of logging in with a third-party account takes about as much time as filling out a name, email address and a password into a form. Since I can even get my browser to auto-fill my name and email address and auto-generate a random password, creating "yet another account" (a couple of clicks, no typing at all) is actually less hassle for me than logging in with some other account and then going through a scary-looking authorization prompt. In fact, apart from Stack Overflow, I can't remember a single website where my identity is tied to another account of mine.
      - orillian 14y ago
        And to make things worse a lot of time after you go through the facebook/google/github login they still require you to pick a password for their service, which means the login was purely to get you to link your accounts to their services which just feels icky to me. Sure support it as an option, but don't make it mandatory that you have a account with social media service X.
    - martinced 14y ago
      "I'd say that GitHub auth for a service aimed at developers is a reasonable assumption to make." As long as its optional. I'm hosting my own Git repositories on servers I own, hosted in centers with fat pipes. I know devs working on sensitive stuff which shall never make it to any public / cloud / whatever. There are also developers who are not at all into the "open source" thinggy. It's good if they conveniently allow GitHub for those who are using GitHub as long as they also offer other ways to login (say OpenID [even if it has its flaws] or good old email/password or whatever).
  - rst 14y ago
    Not all developers have a Facebook account. And the ones that do don't necessarily want their professional activity tied to it. Twitter has no official policy barring the same person from having multiple accounts (though Github does, for free accounts; thanks to niggler for the correction) --- so, if you want to keep your use of the service from being tied to your other online activity, you can just create a throwaway account. Facebook does; creating "throwaways" potentially puts your use of both Facebook and the other service at risk. More seriously, neither is known for, say, tracking logged-in user activity on other sites (the way Facebook is known to do with "like" buttons).
    - niggler 14y ago
      Github does (read the terms of service) but I can't recall when they enforced it: "One person or legal entity may not maintain more than one free account." https://help.github.com/articles/github-terms-of-service https://help.github.com/articles/github-terms-of-service Section A7
- nextparadigms 14y ago
  What is the benefit for developers anyway? They get a bit more subscribers this way? But don't they lose like almost all control over those accounts to Facebook?
  - eli 14y ago
    It's purely to make it annoying to repeatedly sign up for three month trials. If you'd like to pay BrowserStack money for their service, they will gladly take it without requiring a Facebook account. (It's a pretty nice service, by the way)
- jaredmcateer 14y ago
  The sad thing is, if you implemented OpenID you can painlessly enable sign in to your site through Google, Yahoo, the StackExchange network and a myriad of independent openid providers, but no, we're going with Facebook guys.
  - jinushaun 14y ago
    The problem with OpenID is that nobody (read: regular people) knows how to use it. It never had the mainstream pick up of Facebook and Twitter logins.
    - jaredmcateer 14y ago
      Google/Yahoo/StackExchange/Flikr sign in with OpenID works exactly the same way that Facebook login works (to the user.) Your site presents a button, the user clicks it, and if it's the first time they get a popup asking to grant access, then they're logged in. Those four domains are pretty far reaching in terms of casual and technical users but now you can also provide a third option for even more technical users to use a custom OpenID, for virtually no additional cost in development.

> Step 1 – Log-in with Facebook to activate your 3 month testing service. Thanks. No.

by pdknsk 14y ago

> Step 1 – Log-in with Facebook to activate your 3 month testing service. Thanks. No.

What's with this trend of companies and startups requiring customers to sign up with Facebook? Especially for developer and technical resources, for which it seems there's a healthy level of dissociation from Facebook.

acabal 14y ago
What's worse is developer-level services that require Twitter to sign up, or sometimes even Github. Not all developers (see: me) have a Twitter or Github account.
- danielgrieve 14y ago
  The services are trying to provide you with easy access so you don't have that barrier of creating "yet another account". Depending on the service they're offering they'll pick a reasonable third-party that offers oAuth integration. I'd say that GitHub auth for a service aimed at developers is a reasonable assumption to make.
  - kijin 14y ago
    The process of logging in with a third-party account takes about as much time as filling out a name, email address and a password into a form. Since I can even get my browser to auto-fill my name and email address and auto-generate a random password, creating "yet another account" (a couple of clicks, no typing at all) is actually less hassle for me than logging in with some other account and then going through a scary-looking authorization prompt. In fact, apart from Stack Overflow, I can't remember a single website where my identity is tied to another account of mine.
    - orillian 14y ago
      And to make things worse a lot of time after you go through the facebook/google/github login they still require you to pick a password for their service, which means the login was purely to get you to link your accounts to their services which just feels icky to me. Sure support it as an option, but don't make it mandatory that you have a account with social media service X.
  - martinced 14y ago
    "I'd say that GitHub auth for a service aimed at developers is a reasonable assumption to make." As long as its optional. I'm hosting my own Git repositories on servers I own, hosted in centers with fat pipes. I know devs working on sensitive stuff which shall never make it to any public / cloud / whatever. There are also developers who are not at all into the "open source" thinggy. It's good if they conveniently allow GitHub for those who are using GitHub as long as they also offer other ways to login (say OpenID [even if it has its flaws] or good old email/password or whatever).
- rst 14y ago
  Not all developers have a Facebook account. And the ones that do don't necessarily want their professional activity tied to it. Twitter has no official policy barring the same person from having multiple accounts (though Github does, for free accounts; thanks to niggler for the correction) --- so, if you want to keep your use of the service from being tied to your other online activity, you can just create a throwaway account. Facebook does; creating "throwaways" potentially puts your use of both Facebook and the other service at risk. More seriously, neither is known for, say, tracking logged-in user activity on other sites (the way Facebook is known to do with "like" buttons).
  - niggler 14y ago
    Github does (read the terms of service) but I can't recall when they enforced it: "One person or legal entity may not maintain more than one free account." https://help.github.com/articles/github-terms-of-service https://help.github.com/articles/github-terms-of-service Section A7
nextparadigms 14y ago
What is the benefit for developers anyway? They get a bit more subscribers this way? But don't they lose like almost all control over those accounts to Facebook?
- eli 14y ago
  It's purely to make it annoying to repeatedly sign up for three month trials. If you'd like to pay BrowserStack money for their service, they will gladly take it without requiring a Facebook account. (It's a pretty nice service, by the way)
jaredmcateer 14y ago
The sad thing is, if you implemented OpenID you can painlessly enable sign in to your site through Google, Yahoo, the StackExchange network and a myriad of independent openid providers, but no, we're going with Facebook guys.
- jinushaun 14y ago
  The problem with OpenID is that nobody (read: regular people) knows how to use it. It never had the mainstream pick up of Facebook and Twitter logins.
  - jaredmcateer 14y ago
    Google/Yahoo/StackExchange/Flikr sign in with OpenID works exactly the same way that Facebook login works (to the user.) Your site presents a button, the user clicks it, and if it's the first time they get a popup asking to grant access, then they're logged in. Those four domains are pretty far reaching in terms of casual and technical users but now you can also provide a third option for even more technical users to use a custom OpenID, for virtually no additional cost in development.