Disabling Facebook Connect on Non-Facebook Websites
July 13, 2010 7:06 PM   Subscribe

David Collier has discovered a pleasant trick (requiring Firefox and AdBlock Plus) that brings the mighty Facebook Connect empire to its knees.
posted by WCityMike (87 comments total)

This post was deleted for the following reason: Poster's Request -- loup



 
You could easily do this with a HOSTS file blocking the same domain or use any number of specialized firefox extensions to help block selected sites. Using Adblock tweaks to block facebook seems like wanting a little salt on your dinner and using a earth moving rock crusher to sprinkle it above your plate.
posted by mathowie at 7:12 PM on July 13, 2010 [5 favorites]


Joey Gladstone, you've done it again!

Seriously, though, this is swell. I hate, hate, hate involuntary Facebook encroachment.
posted by griphus at 7:15 PM on July 13, 2010 [2 favorites]


Wooooooohoooooooo!!!!!!!!
posted by phunniemee at 7:15 PM on July 13, 2010


I think the trick is that it does not break facebook itself, which I think you'd have a hard time doing with a HOSTS file or any sort of brute force blocking.

From the article:

$domain=~facebook.com|~127.0.0.1 is an exclusion to the block that states if you are actually on facebook.com don't block the content. The 127.0.0.1 exclusion is your local computer - this is because the Facebook plugin used by the Java picture uploader actually loads from your local computer, this makes sure the uploader continues to work.

Myself, I'm the verge of just deleting my facebook account, which I don't use that much, I'm so sick of seeing my facebook icon all over the fucking web.
posted by ericost at 7:18 PM on July 13, 2010


According to the description, the filter blocks any content from the facebook domain unless you are on the facebook site. There's nothing you could put in a hosts file that would accomplish this trick because it relies on the browser's client-side capabilities. Seems like a clean and efficient solution to me, particularly if you're already using adblock.

On preview, more or less what ericost said.
posted by George_Spiggott at 7:18 PM on July 13, 2010


Yep, works very nicely, thank you. Now I can go back to using one browser again. (I was opening Facebook in Chrome, and everything else in Firefox).
posted by fourcheesemac at 7:19 PM on July 13, 2010 [1 favorite]


Excellent. Now I don't have to look at this plague any more. And since I was already using AdBlock, it took about five seconds to implement.
posted by pmurray63 at 7:20 PM on July 13, 2010


Nice. Cheers.
posted by ob at 7:22 PM on July 13, 2010


Unfortunately, it kills Scrabble on facebook as well.
posted by pjern at 7:25 PM on July 13, 2010


Actually Facebook Connect is the first of two problems that convinced me to log out of Facebook and never return.

The second problem was Facebook's complete (and openly-acknowledged) lack of respect for its users' privacy, data, and login information.

And unless there's a Firefox add-on that can fix that second problem, I ain't going back.
posted by ErikaB at 7:26 PM on July 13, 2010 [1 favorite]


Works great. Thanks for the test page link WCityMike.
posted by Babblesort at 7:32 PM on July 13, 2010


If I understand correctly, asterisks are wildcards, so

*.facebook.*

covers most if not all of those.
posted by box at 7:33 PM on July 13, 2010


Things that are like punching yourself in the face:
  • Browsing the web without adblock
Things that are like punching yourself in the face while crying out "help, I'm punching myself in the face":
  • Using facebook and complaining about their misuse of personal information and their questionably legitimate cross-site scripting hacks
posted by George_Spiggott at 7:33 PM on July 13, 2010 [14 favorites]


All but the fbcdn.net ones, maybe? I'm definitely no expert on this stuff (though I used to use the Junkbuster proxy).
posted by box at 7:35 PM on July 13, 2010


The first rule of Pleasant Trick Club is don't talk about Pleasant Trick Club.
posted by Ironmouth at 7:36 PM on July 13, 2010 [6 favorites]


The second rule of... oh ummm nevermind.
posted by Babblesort at 7:37 PM on July 13, 2010


Works for Chrome, too. Just leave out the || at the beginning.
posted by briank at 7:41 PM on July 13, 2010 [1 favorite]


Has anyone converted this trick to work with the Safari AdBlock extensions? The syntax seems to be different.

I remember seeing up a similar gadget a while ago, with PithHelmet for Safari. I got sick of seeing Amazon.com widgets on everyone's website, but I couldn't figure out how to block them. I asked the PithHelmet author to take a crack at it. He cooked up a complex rule that blocked Amazon.com everywhere except Amazon.com's site. Worked like a charm. It's no big trick to block a site's embedded links everywhere, you could do that with a hosts entry. The trick is to block it everywhere but just one site: the home site.

I am on an aggressive Anti-Social Software campaign. I have been aggressively blocking a wide variety of social aggregator sites, like Google Followers, Networked blogs, and a ton of metrics sites, plus annoying toolbar gadgetry. I'm sick of all that crap. People don't want all that Web 2.0 social software crap. People want Anti-Social Software to filter OUT all that crap. So I have been promoting my ASS campaign, seeking out and developing new Antisocial technologies. People don't want web technologies to bring other peoples' useless crap onto their computer. They want ways to filter OUT all the other people's stupid crap. Other people are annoying. The spam you, they have obnoxious and ignorant political opinions, they are people you want to avoid, like your brother-in-law, etc. If there was a way to filter out the 99.999999% of unwanted crap from the net, what was left would be interesting and relevant by default.
posted by charlie don't surf at 7:43 PM on July 13, 2010 [3 favorites]


There's also this:

1. Top bar > Account > Privacy Settings
2. At the bottom, under Applications and Websites: Edit Your Settings
3. Turn off all platform applications
posted by domnit at 7:49 PM on July 13, 2010


Hey Facebook!

Cut.

It.

Out.
posted by Bonzai at 7:52 PM on July 13, 2010 [2 favorites]


I just ponied up $5 and as long as I am logged in I seldom see ads. Oh, wait, facebook...nevermind.
posted by cjorgensen at 7:55 PM on July 13, 2010


Using Adblock tweaks to block facebook seems like wanting a little salt on your dinner and using a earth moving rock crusher to sprinkle it above your plate.

Kinda like writing greasemonkey scripts to make metafilter do things that could easily be done on the server side?
posted by crunchland at 7:55 PM on July 13, 2010 [4 favorites]


Somebody mentioned the hosts file solution which, while it may not do much for the Facebook Connect problem specifically, makes the 'webz a thousand times more bearable, and does it in a far less resource-hungry way than AdBlock (which is also recommended, of course). Here's an insanely thorough version:

http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/

Copy and paste it into your /etc/hosts file, and make sure you don't overwrite any of your previous customizations to the file.

This is sort of a reply to charlie, because he's running OSX and this customization will surely help him with his ASS.
posted by tapesonthefloor at 7:58 PM on July 13, 2010 [14 favorites]


Works for Chrome, too. Just leave out the || at the beginning.

Yay! That works for AdBlock for Safari too, since it's a port of AdBlock for Chrome.

You are hereby appointed an Honorary Knight of the A.S.S. However, you will still not receive an invitation to ASSCon 3. Nobody gets invitations to the conference. That would defeat the whole point.
posted by charlie don't surf at 7:59 PM on July 13, 2010 [1 favorite]


Kinda like writing greasemonkey scripts to make metafilter do things that could easily be done on the server side?

That comes across as sorta dickish.

I bet you know that most of the things people have written metafilters user scripts for are things that not everybody wants, and that filling up the preferences page with tons of features you can flip on and off is not scalable.
posted by ericost at 8:04 PM on July 13, 2010 [1 favorite]


I fell in love with the internet all over again!
posted by fuq at 8:06 PM on July 13, 2010


Thanks, tapesonthefloor. It will probably not surprise you to learn I am already using an extensive hosts file, courtesy of MVPS, with a ton of custom additions I made myself. But I will have to check out your hosts suggestion, and see how it differs. Perhaps it is better.

There is also a rather nice little MacOS X Automator workflow gadget to automatically download each monthly MVPS update and overwrite the local hosts file. Alas, it overwrites my custom additions. Hmm.. I wonder if OS X supports the old Linux includes, so I could just add an include statement to an external file with my custom additions. It would be easier to just add one line of includes each month, so I can maintain a separate file with my hosts. Well now I must do some more ASS programming experiments.
posted by charlie don't surf at 8:09 PM on July 13, 2010 [2 favorites]


Wow. Very nice!
posted by drhydro at 8:10 PM on July 13, 2010


@ tapesonthefloor

How does your linked HOST file compare to this?

Is it better? Use both?
posted by yoyo_nyc at 8:11 PM on July 13, 2010


Now I'm being totally serious here. No snark. But how many people here are not on Facebook?

I never got it when it started and although I know a buttload of people who want me to get on it, I just never saw the need for it.

It's just not my thing. I was OTOH on Twitter for a while and made a few actual friends there. Up to the point where I was in touch with them IRL.

But Facebook never was anything that I'd try.

What is the thing about Facebook that I'm missing? If anything.

The funny thing is that I kept getting invites from my brother in Florida. I finally called him and asked him to stop sending them and he said he knew nothing about it. As it turns out his girlfriend had set up a page for him. And put his connection data on it.

So it was inviting me, even though he never logged on to Facebook.

Words were spoken. Some a bit on the angry side. Not by me. And now I am Facebook email free. Except for the occasional one from the ex-wife of a close friend.

Is this some kind of pyramid scheme?
posted by Splunge at 8:26 PM on July 13, 2010


No, but Farmville is.
posted by crunchland at 8:27 PM on July 13, 2010


Sweet. Now the facebook comment section on MetaFilter is gone and I can comment the old school way!
posted by eyeballkid at 8:31 PM on July 13, 2010


It would be easier to just add one line of each month, so I can maintain a separate file with my hosts. Well now I must do some more ASS programming experiments.

If it doesn't, you could just use a cronjob to snarf down the host file and then cat your custom file onto the end.
posted by arto at 8:36 PM on July 13, 2010


Thanks, I have been thinking about trying to find a way to do this for a while.
posted by grouse at 8:38 PM on July 13, 2010


Farmville. One of those things that makes me wish I was a programmer instead of a hardware guy.
posted by Splunge at 8:44 PM on July 13, 2010


I solved this by never logging on to facebook with firefox. I use firefox for almost all of my browsing, unless a site is running slowly in firefox or something. But recently I've started using facebook in chrome only.

You could easily do this with a HOSTS file blocking the same domain

That's kind of a lot more work then just adding an adblock rule. Speaking of which, Adblock rules! When people figured out how to block that stupid 'tynt' thing that added crap to your copied and pasted text, adding an addblock rule took a lot less time then going to my hosts file and editing it.

Also, this seems to work by blocking facebook when the main URL is not on facebook.com.
posted by delmoi at 8:47 PM on July 13, 2010


If it doesn't, you could just use a cronjob to snarf down the host file and then cat your custom file onto the end.

True. In unix, there is Always More Than One Way To Do It. But there is something that appeals to me about using includes, that's the way a real programmer would do it. In fact, a real unix geek would use a cron job to insert the include. I used to do geeky crap like that all the time in MkLinux, the precursor to OS X.
posted by charlie don't surf at 8:51 PM on July 13, 2010


I hate, hate, hate involuntary Facebook encroachment.

Then delete your account.

Look, this is pretty simple. You're not Facebook's client. You're Facebook's product. Advertisers are their client. Don't like it, don't participate.

By continuing to use Facebook in the face of everything they've done with your data to violate your privacy and general goodwill, you are tacitly admitting that whatever you say, you're actually fine with that.
posted by mhoye at 8:52 PM on July 13, 2010 [6 favorites]


Oh, and by the way, if you're going to do the hostsfile thing, make sure you're not running a web server.

I had tried to block AOL-IMs little ads using a host file technique, and when AIM couldn't load an ad and got a 404, it would try again immediately and ended up eating up a ton of CPU time. Seems like a pretty poor design, since it would have destroyed their systems if something ever got misconfigurationed.
posted by delmoi at 8:53 PM on July 13, 2010


Splunge: "... how many people here are not on Facebook? "

I was on, but am not now. Two years ago or more I saw the writing on the wall, so to speak, and closed the account. They kept modifying both their privacy policy and the amount of my data they sold/shared by default. At the time I felt like I was being slightly paranoid but if anything those concerns about identity theft and privacy issues weren't paranoid enough - they've gone out of their way to steamroll their revenue model into place, user concerns be damned.

So, go David Collier! If this were an app I'd seed the hell out of its torrent.
posted by Hardcore Poser at 8:56 PM on July 13, 2010


I deleted my Facebook account two months ago. I miss Facebook's shenanigans, as they gave me a sink for that day's outrage.
posted by zippy at 9:04 PM on July 13, 2010


"By continuing to use Facebook in the face of everything they've done with your data to violate your privacy and general goodwill, you are tacitly admitting that whatever you say, you're actually fine with that."

It's like everyone I knew in highschool, and all my former coworkers and extended family decided to get together for a party. But for some reason they decided to hold it at residence of the biggest dick in highschool. Apparently they don't see this guy as a dick, or his dickishness doesn't rub them the wrong way. In any case I can either skip the party on principle or show up and politely warn friends about the host and enjoy the opportunity to reconnect with people. Just because I accept that this is where everyone is doesn't mean I'm happy about it.
posted by Manjusri at 9:30 PM on July 13, 2010 [12 favorites]


Splunge: "But how many people here are not on Facebook? "

I'm not.
posted by boo_radley at 9:34 PM on July 13, 2010


What is the thing about Facebook that I'm missing?

Manjusri put it well. Basically, there are a large number of people who use Facebook to socialize, both on the web and to co-ordinate offline socialization. If you want to be in touch with / hang out with these people, email and phone aren't going to cut it, you have to be on Facebook.

So some people have little reason -- it all depends on whether the social circle you're in / want to be in uses Facebook as their primary tool. If they do, then you either join or make life difficult, so it depends on how much Facebook policies annoy you.

Personally, I do put info on my profile, but I don't care if any of it becomes public. Most of it already is anyway. While I do set their "privacy controls", I still follow the rule that I don't enter anything I wouldn't want showing up in a google search. If their privacy policy was different I might put more on my profile, but who knows.
posted by wildcrdj at 10:42 PM on July 13, 2010 [1 favorite]


you could just use a cronjob to snarf down the host file and then cat your custom file onto the end.

Everyone experiments at least once in college, right?
posted by archivist at 11:00 PM on July 13, 2010 [2 favorites]


I'm blocking *facebook.com/plugins/activity* and that seems to work just fine.
posted by bjrn at 2:26 AM on July 14, 2010


> Now I'm being totally serious here. No snark. But how many people here are not on Facebook?

*raises hand* I closed my account a few months ago. It actually felt like (a mild version of) quitting smoking.
posted by Skyanth at 2:57 AM on July 14, 2010


Collier's trick does work just fine in Chrome. In the test article, comments are utterly removed. I suppose this means that this will keep people from leaving comments with articles that use the Facebook system?
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 3:08 AM on July 14, 2010


I hate hate hate Facebook Connect, so now I'm trying to decide which is greater: my love for Facebook Scrabble, or the rage I get whenever I see the Facebook comment box on an unrelated-to-facebook site. Hmm. Decisions.
posted by badmoonrising at 3:14 AM on July 14, 2010


Nice. I'm on facebook but never use it and now it pops up all over the damn place. I wish I could delete it but my kids think it's the only way to send me a message sometimes, like I didn't buy them phones.
posted by shinybaum at 4:00 AM on July 14, 2010


I hate, hate, hate involuntary Facebook encroachment.

Then delete your account.


I've never had a Facebook account. (Even if I was tempted to be part of that marketing machine, Zuckerberg has repeatedly proven that he can't be trusted.) Yet I'm still subjected to them. I'm sick of their boxes and buttons showing up at sites I do use, like the Washington Post.

But not anymore. :)
posted by pmurray63 at 4:10 AM on July 14, 2010


You can also, y'know, simply stay logged-out of Facebook unless you're at Facebook. That's what I do and I've never seen my pic or name in those FB comment fields, like the one at money.cnn.
posted by Thorzdad at 4:31 AM on July 14, 2010 [1 favorite]


It depresses me immensely that people are creating blocking scripts and using separate browsers for Facebook, rather than deleting their accounts in disgust.
Yeah, I get it that some social circles completely revolve around Facebook, but it seems they can get away with absolutely anything and users will just meekly take it.
posted by malevolent at 4:35 AM on July 14, 2010 [1 favorite]


Extension for Safari 5 which seems to do the same thing: Defacer.
posted by him at 4:42 AM on July 14, 2010


Nice trick, I'll add this when I get home.

I still have my Facebook account (I joined back when the Wall was a single block of text, editable by any of your friends, and there was no News Feed, no photos, videos or apps - I've had it a long time, basically, so I feel it would be a shame to lose it) but I recently purged it of pretty much all information other than my name, website, and photos. That reduces it to a system for chatting with my friends, passing round fun links, and looking at other people's pictures - essentially, a more fully-featured Twitter.

I've made a point of not "Liking" any Facebook Pages, or anything via Facebook Connect, so I think I'm keeping my personal data loss under control. It seems to be one of those services which can be horrendous, but if you're careful, it's really not that bad.
posted by ZsigE at 5:03 AM on July 14, 2010


Now I'm being totally serious here. No snark. But how many people here are not on Facebook?

People who did not care about facebook (or facebook-privacy-related-news) would not be reading this thread about facebook privacy. They would not see your question, and would not post in response to it.

What I'm saying is: the results of your informal survey will be meaningless.

Here's a statistic for you: 1,802,330,457 internet users, 400,000,000 'active' facebook users (of whom 50% log in on any given day), so about 22% of internet users are also facebook users.
posted by Mike1024 at 5:33 AM on July 14, 2010 [1 favorite]


I deleted my account and have been living Facebook-free since shortly before the Connect changes were implemented.

Soooo liberating. No more wasting time reading the boring details of the lives of people I barely know. Damn thing always felt like a narcissism enabler, i.e. "Oooh look at the fabulous places I've been, see my beautiful children, oh boy here's my new car, isn't it great? Look at my self-portrait! Am I fabulous or what?"

For me, Facebook felt like a La Brea Tar Pit for the mind.
posted by kinnakeet at 5:42 AM on July 14, 2010


Extension for Safari 5 which seems to do the same thing: Defacer.
posted by him at 4:42 AM on July 14 [+] [!]


In my test of this page:
Facebook test

Defacer successfully stripped out my Facebook info, but I lost all of the other comments as well.
posted by digsrus at 6:03 AM on July 14, 2010


Badmoonrising, you don't have to choose. Just do the "pleasant trick", and then go to your scrabble page. Click on the ABP icon on the firefox toolbar and select "disable on apps.facebook.com". Bingo!
posted by WhackyparseThis at 6:32 AM on July 14, 2010 [2 favorites]


so let me get this straight:

* it disables the auto-login of Facebook Connect but
* it doesn't disable the Facebook comments widget.

so i setill see the widget but i dont see my face on the widget (nor any LIKE buttons and assorted bullshit from Facebook).

if this is so, 'tis brilliant. i actually stopped using SCRIB'D and SLIDESHARE as sources and won't link back to them exactly because of Facebook Connect. i wont move people to site where they will under their surveillance.
posted by liza at 6:35 AM on July 14, 2010


Question: Is there an app that is a search-able crawler to see *where* (if any) my FB comments are posted? BTW thanks for the link-nicely done.
posted by ~Sushma~ at 6:42 AM on July 14, 2010


btw, am on my first cup of coffee, so writing? am totally doing it wrong :P
posted by liza at 6:44 AM on July 14, 2010


My company blocks Facebook. So, any web site I get onto is full of a million grey "blocked!" boxes, and it drives me nuts. Thank you so much for this!!
posted by Melismata at 6:45 AM on July 14, 2010


NoScript.
posted by rxrfrx at 6:47 AM on July 14, 2010


No more wasting time reading the boring details of the lives of people I barely know. Damn thing always felt like a narcissism enabler, i.e. "Oooh look at the fabulous places I've been, see my beautiful children, oh boy here's my new car, isn't it great? Look at my self-portrait! Am I fabulous or what?"

I dunno--for me, it's a way to keep up with organizations I'm interested in, see neat links that people think I might find worthwhile, receive invites to cool events, get little glimpses of what faraway friends are making or where they're going or how they're feeling, look at pictures of delicious food and beautiful art and cute kids and animals and girls I have vague crushes on, that kind of thing.

Maybe I'm using it wrong.
posted by box at 7:07 AM on July 14, 2010 [2 favorites]


now I'm trying to decide which is greater: my love for Facebook Scrabble, or the rage I get whenever I see the Facebook comment box on an unrelated-to-facebook site. Hmm. Decisions.

Just a note: I added the linked filter yesterday and it's not interfering with my FB Lexulous games. Can you persuade your friends to switch over to Lexulous?
posted by Elsa at 7:28 AM on July 14, 2010


Yep, just logging out worked for me.
posted by slogger at 7:41 AM on July 14, 2010


Nope, the ABP recipe also disables the Facebook comment widget. (Which is fine by me.)
posted by WCityMike at 10:20 AM on July 14


Hrmmmmm. Well, this is then not fully working for me BUT it may be because

1. am running Better Privacy, which i've set up to nuke LSO's every 30 minutes.

2. i've also set my browser to not allow 3rd party cookies on any site --which leaves me to manually turn it on if i want to see embedded videos on blogs or sites that are hosted elsewhere (ie: Vimeo or YouTube).

3. i've gotten into the habit of scrubbing my computers of anything having to do with Facebook once i log out of that site.

unfortunately, just as someone pointed out, i have about half of my non-techie humanity following me on facebook: high school friends, family, distant relatives, former co-workers. i am on facebook not because i want to but because it's an evil necessity (at least for now).
posted by liza at 7:58 AM on July 14, 2010 [1 favorite]


Yo box, good for you. I think the issue is that I have the wrong friends.
posted by kinnakeet at 8:06 AM on July 14, 2010


Why is it that anytime I hear anything about Facebook lately, it seems that it's someone talking about ways of getting around something awful that they've implemented?

On a good note, when people now ask me why I never log in, I can say "privacy concerns" or "I don't like the invasive tertiary stuff" rather than the far more accurate "I'm a lazy fucker who doesn't have the energy to put up with it..."

Still, a cool use of ABP.
posted by quin at 8:17 AM on July 14, 2010


Can't you just be logged out of facebook? As an experiment I clicked the "like" button on a gawker site and it prompted me to log in, which I declined.
posted by a robot made out of meat at 9:22 AM on July 14, 2010


I can't get past the nifty idea of using an earth moving rock crusher to dispense salt. Perhaps paired with an industrial wood chipper as pepper mill?
posted by Manjusri at 11:13 AM on July 14, 2010 [2 favorites]


Oh thank GOD - it was so annoying to be prompted EVERY. SINGLE. TIME I went to TV.com to connect to my FB account - hey guys? How about an option for "No thank you, and never again"?
posted by antifuse at 12:09 PM on July 14, 2010


Ha! I underestimated the tolerance for facebook by members here. I figured if you wanted no part of Facebook infecting other sites, you'd likely not be visiting facebook itself.
posted by mathowie at 1:08 PM on July 14, 2010


Not to keep grinding the same axe, but just deleting your data from your Facebook account does nothing. Facebook never actually deletes it from their system. They just hide it from being displayed.

Why would they delete it? It's valuable to them. And according to their TOS, it's their property - not yours.
posted by ErikaB at 2:09 PM on July 14, 2010 [1 favorite]


I'm another one of those smug fuckers who closed their Facebook accounts. Don't miss it, even in the slightest: the weight of yet another thing to do that now I don't, lifted.

Hell, I didn't even visit the site more than once a month when I had the account, anyway.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 8:45 PM on July 14, 2010


I'm sort of obliged to use Facebook because of its very insidiousness, which I realize is a Catch-22. In order to communicate with co-workers, family, and other contacts - who are all using Facebook and always one Facebook, as opposed to any other social network or even an IM service - I, too, must use Facebook. It's the Borg of social networking.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 4:11 AM on July 15, 2010


" ... always on Facebook ..." rather.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 4:12 AM on July 15, 2010


If you've ever tried to disable your account, you know that the site literally guilts you, like your grandmother, not to do it. That's completely effed up. I've hovered my cursor over the "disable your account" button a half dozen times in recent weeks over on Facebook, but then it reminds me of all the people that I know who use it, and how I'll probably lose all contact with them if I do click the button, so I just close the window instead, and curse the effing site all the more.
posted by crunchland at 4:39 AM on July 15, 2010


The Firefox add-on Antisocial will also do this. I've been using this for a while now, and it works well.
posted by bluefly at 5:04 AM on July 15, 2010


Also, I find it curious that people take Facebook so seriously. I don't really post anything very personal (or professional) on there. It's just a way to see what people are doing, and to share things you feel comfortable sharing. Nobody should be posting anything on FB that they wouldn't want everyone in the world knowing -- I don't know that I would trust any semi-private internet site (I suppose I do trust my bank's website), and so I act accordingly. You can block or hide unwanted people, so if someone else is oversharing, you don't have to see it. It's just harmless fun.
posted by bluefly at 5:18 AM on July 15, 2010


People don't want all that Web 2.0 social software crap.

No, you don't want it. 500 million other people clearly do.
posted by kjs3 at 10:17 AM on July 15, 2010


To expand on Manjusri's analogy from my perspective, it's more like everyone knows he's a dick, it's just that he's got the nicest house out of anyone who actually hosts these events.
posted by a_green_man at 11:10 AM on July 15, 2010


I underestimated the tolerance for facebook by members here.

Every single non-geek friend and family member I have is on Facebook. They use it almost exclusively for all of their communications online. Which means that if I want to communicate with them online (or see any of the pictures of my nieces in Ireland), I have to have Facebook. I barely ever go onto my FB page, and barely have any content on it (other than photos), so I'm not too concerned about my privacy. Other than FB hijacking other websites, I really don't have any problem with it at all. And now this has solved that problem for me too :)
posted by antifuse at 8:14 AM on July 16, 2010


This recent FaceBook action caused our engineering team to redo and embed new code that took 6plus hours. They have no consideration for businesses that are building their brand for nothing and making it a pain to update and expense one does not need during these tough times.
posted by ClueHut at 1:00 AM on July 20, 2010


This recent FaceBook action caused our engineering team to redo and embed new code that took 6plus hours. They have no consideration for businesses that are building their brand for nothing and making it a pain to update and expense one does not need during these tough times.

So, take FB integration out of your site. Nobody is forcing you to use it. Or wait, are you benefiting from FB's HUGE HUGE userbase? Well then, this is the price you have to pay.
posted by antifuse at 7:48 AM on July 26, 2010


Worth noting the recipe's been updated a bit on July 19 after Wladimir, the current maintainer of the AdBlock Plus extension, weighed in with a suggestion or two on improving it.

Thanks for the update. I changed my ABP recipe, after I noted that the previous one had already blocked Facebook connect 200 times. Sweet.
posted by grouse at 7:55 AM on July 26, 2010


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