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Facebook Privacy Social Networks Your Rights Online

Facebook Offers Easy Commenting Alternative 132

Posted by timothy from the disqus-among-yourselves dept.
Spice Consumer writes "Facebook has just unveiled a 'new system (that) lets website owners replace their current commenting system with Facebook's simply by dropping in a few lines of JavaScript.' How widely adopted this new system becomes could greatly affect Facebook's already entrenched position on the web and further compromise individual users' privacy."
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Facebook Offers Easy Commenting Alternative More

Facebook Offers Easy Commenting Alternative

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  • I have seen this several times already (Score:5, Insightful)

    by peragrin ( 659227 ) on Saturday March 05, 2011 @02:02PM (#35390520)

    and all it does is prevent me from posting comments.

    Something to do with me not having a facebook account but my voice is being stifled because I am not an attention whore.

    • FTFA:

      Commenters can opt to have their comment posted as an update, along with a link to the original story, which spreads the story link inside Facebook’s walls.

      By linking original articles back to FB the site using FB's comment system will certainly see an increase in their Google rankings in pretty short order. Unfortuneatly this will make it a pretty serious consideration for many.

      • By linking original articles back to FB the site using FB's comment system will certainly see an increase in their Google rankings in pretty short order.

        Not likely. Despite what Facebook's questionable views on privacy might lead you to believe, Google can't index a person's wall.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by devxo ( 1963088 )
          However, it's actually a HUGE incentive for sites to start using it. They will get loads of free traffic as people post link to the story to their Facebook wall.

          • However, it's actually a HUGE incentive for sites to start using it. They will get loads of free traffic as people post link to the story to their Facebook wall.

            No they won't. All the evidence indicates that almost nobody actually READS most facebook posts. Look at the woman with over 1100 "friends" who posted her intent to commit suicide, and nobody did anything. The few people who actually read it (lets face it, do YOU read everything that's posted?) did nothing, since facebook is considered "junk food for the brain". Actually, more like "junk food lite."

        • Off topic, but... (Score:5, Funny)

          by zill ( 1690130 ) on Saturday March 05, 2011 @02:32PM (#35390784)

          Google can't index a person's wall.

          For hilarity, imagine how utterly confusing this sentence is for someone from the year 1998.

          • Hmm, this is the internet, so that's clearly a glory hole, but this "Mr. Google" fellow seems to be quite the pervert.

        • I agree. If it's all inside an IFRAME, it's not going to add any value to the host page at all. Just another piece of JS to run that slows down your page rendering times resulting in getting penalised in the Google SERPS. Great. Not all a loss though. Will be great content for FB to spin and puke up somewhere else. Bitter ? Me ?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Dan541 ( 1032000 )

          Would Google want to index a persons wall? Seems like a good way to degrade the search results. Allot of Self Promoting attention whores, it would be like letting us set our own pagerank.

    • Yeah, I already created a Facebook profile (which I didn't have before) for nothing but this. But I also don't want my postings from different sites linked together. I just want to have the content stand on its own. So I guess now, a different Facebook profile for each site to which I comment?

      One good thing could come of this - most sites' comment systems are terrible, and facebook might get it right eventually. Currently, many sites can't even show a threaded discussion, or have no concept of moderat

      • One good thing could come of this - most sites' comment systems are terrible

        This is exactly what I was thinking. This definitely fills a niche. Except...

        ...facebook might get it right eventually. Currently, many sites can't even show a threaded discussion, or have no concept of moderation, or (in the case of CNN) don't even enable you to find responses to your own comments!

        I have not personally encountered this facebook commenting system on other sites, yet, but I cannot say that facebook exemplifies any of these very well. Particularly threading. I mean, it is no worse than, say, Wordpress's commenting system. But I cannot say that it is better. Certainly not sufficiently better to entice me to switch.

        I don't know how much of this is fixed by facebook's system, but if it becomes a big thing for them I assume they will make it work well sooner or later.

        Privacy issues aside, for me to use it on my own blog the system would have to be substantia

        • Download geeklog [geeklog.net] - you'll get flat, nested, threaded, printable, notifications of responses to your comments, and the ability to edit the original comment to append new text (handy when you made a typo and don't want to start a flame war or look retarded :-)

          The "edit comment" is configurable by the site admin - off, or up to x minutes after the original post. Users see the added text in a different font, along with a note saying the comment was edited. No confusion.

          • Thank you! I had never heard of geeklog; I will check it out.

            The main shortcoming I see in most commenting systems is the lack of a preview feature, when HTML is allowed. But time-limited editing of comments is very interesting. If I had to choose between the two, I think editing might be even better.

            • Groklaw [groklaw.net] uses it (but with most features disabled).

              And yes, you get html preview, and you can change the set of tags that are allowed to regular posters, and a more permissive set to the admin.

      • They won't fix the lack of threading because threading and/or nesting requires more server resources. Better database design. The ability to show nested threads in a screen more than x pixels wide. Facebooks' design is still stuck in the last century, both in terms of layout (fixed width) and implementation (flat comments).

        Usenet readers do a better job.

      • Actually, I found Facebook comments to be worse than many other methods. There is no way to reply to a message. There is no way on a site to report spam messages left by people who set up Facebook profiles to, you guessed it, spam comment sites! And the general nature of the comments is just as insipid as the comments on a Facebook news feed.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by SeaFox ( 739806 )

        or have no concept of moderation

        I think this has less to do with crappy commenting systems and more to do with websites simply not caring enough. They don't want to pay someone to keep things in line (and on larger sites like news organizations moderating really would be a full time job). Plus they don't want to "alienate readers". If you've ever worked a phone support line for the public you realize something: people like to use you for a verbal punching bag. They take out their frustration with their lives on you because you can't hang

    • Yeah, what the hell? You mean I have to make an account on a free service to post?

      This is just stupid! NO other commenting system requires you to create an account! ABSOLUTELY NONE!

      Granted, I've only used 4chan and Slashdot, but still, I think this is a reasonable sample size to extrapolate from.

    • because I am not an attention whore

      You're an attention whore for being willing to talk with friends and family that way? :p That's kind of like how most I know use it...

      • I have a phone and an email address if i want to talk to family.

        Besides do you really want your parents knowing you spent the night drinking and then had a one night stand with a a random woman you picked up while drunk?

        Mixing family and friend relationships is in general a bad idea, unless you are a very boring person.

        • Besides do you really want your parents knowing you spent the night drinking and then had a one night stand with a a random woman you picked up while drunk?

          Mixing family and friend relationships is in general a bad idea, unless you are a very boring person.

          What the hell, there are literally zero people on Slashdot who have to worry about your hypothetical!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by memnock ( 466995 )

      Truthout does this shit. I emailed to inquire about the lack of open commenting. This is what I got back:

      From:
      "Truthout Technical Administrator"
      Add sender to Contacts
      To:
      mmnch@yahoo.com
      I am so sorry for your frustration. For security reasons we have our regular commenting system temporarily down. We will hopefully get it back up soon. Until then, thank you so much for your patience and for your readership.

      On Mon, Feb 28, 2011 at 2:52 PM, wrote:

      Hello. This article:

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Myopic ( 18616 )

      facebook users == attention whores -> false equivalence

  • DONOTWANT

    And be done with it.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      DONOTWANT And be done with it.

      17 people like this.

  • CNN uses this for comments on many of their stories.
    The quality of discussion tends to be better, people self-regulate more crazy responses, and the comments are longer (rather than one sentence rants).

    Blog sites use comment hosting systems such as disqus.
    In my experience, a blog post will receive much more comments when hosted in this manner, rather than just the site's internal comment system.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Moryath ( 553296 )

      The problem with disqus is that I have yet to see a "comment section" from them more than a day old that isn't completely chock-full of comment spam for Thank You For Writing Such An Article I Really Appreciated These Articles And Encourage You To Write More Signed Edward ((link))...

    • >>>CNN uses this for comments on many of their stories.

      The worst part is your comment is now forever linked to you. At least with the older systems, you could make up fake names like "Richard Head" and therefore be untraceable by any future employers, or voters.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by swalve ( 1980968 )
        That's a feature, not a bug.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by hjf ( 703092 )

        . At least with the older systems, you could make up fake names like "Richard Head" and therefore be untraceable by any future employers, or voters.

        Last time I checked, Facebook doesn't ask for ID or verification. I don't see why you can't make a fake account and be happy.

        BTW, google does ask for verification. They require your phone number and to verify it.

      • The worst part is your comment is now forever linked to you. At least with the older systems, you could make up fake names like "Richard Head" and therefore be untraceable by any future employers, or voters.

        I'm not sure I see how any of this could be a fault of the commenting system.

  • Personal Info (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    IMHO, anybody that places actual, tracable personal data anywhere online, deserves precisely what they get. Only a total fool would put stuff on any site that could be traced back to them or be used for fraud (which is rampant). It's especially difficult where you need to purchase something. In that instance, I would use PayPal or some such service, to minimize the number of places that have your data.

    • I'm still blown away since last night, when I found a site [slashdot.org] that creates a fake identity with

      • fake name
      • Occupation
      • address and geographically-correct USA phone #
      • credit card number*
      • weight and height
      • blood type (Asia's fascination with personality divination surprises me --ie: blood types are in Final Fantasy VII and Capcom's Street Fighter II characters). Does any Japan-bound /.-er know if job applications habitually need to know this?
      • UPS Tracking number (to mislead auction fraudsters who reverse electronic paym
  • Ungefähr 87.000 Ergebnisse (0,30 Sekunden).

    Not uncommon practice, at least.

    CC.

  • I work for a website that utilized Facebook as the commenting system. The problems with that, aside from being Facebook-biased, were lack of comment control (no admin way to delete comments), and lag while Facebooks comments sync with each article. Because of those and the lack of choice, we switched to Disqus.

  • Or not.

    (shrug)

    I'm thinking maybe I need to change some of my "bio" information to a few lies..... like born in 1888, or living in Shang-ri-la

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by hduff ( 570443 )

      Or not.

      (shrug)

      I'm thinking maybe I need to change some of my "bio" information to a few lies..... like born in 1888, or living in Shang-ri-la

      Include something about goats .. .

  • Please, please please tell me this can be used with my Google Blogger [blogger.com] account!

    Actually, how about we add some carefully crafted counter-referring Google Adsense and Microsoft adCenter ads and see if we can bring the whole house of cards down!
  • Already does this, and is everywhere. Facebook playing catchup?
  • Could you imagine what would happen if either bought the other? Skynet would become self aware in a minute or two :)

  • This is too much power (Score:5, Interesting)

    by blind biker ( 1066130 ) on Saturday March 05, 2011 @02:23PM (#35390712) Journal

    I am quite upset at all those sites using Facebook's login. Using Facebook for commenting is just another step in the wrong direction of giving Facebook powers over large swaths of the Internet.

    And we're not talking of a benevolent, honest company here, either. This is a company that will try any and all unethical tricks in it's toolbox, and back just half a step back after a huge storm of dicontent. Then they'll try again. This is Fuckerberg's domain, you don't want them in control of anything outside of Facebook.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by hjf ( 703092 )

      Get a fake facebook account. Trollfag.

      • Get a fake facebook account. Trollfag.

        It is good etiquette to put your name in a new line, when you sign your posts.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Indeed. It is disheartening how even insignificant websites written in foreign languages have FB integration.

      My PC-challenged mother has been using Facebook for most of her online pursuits. All those "Like" and "Share" buttons on Youtube, her foreign newsfeeds and random sites have made her believe that they're a normal part of the TCP protocol or something.

      She wouldn't learn how to copy-paste a URL to a good-ol' webmail message until I told her that the selfish FB doesn't allow her to share individual cont

      • My PC-challenged mother has been using Facebook for most of her online pursuits. All those "Like" and "Share" buttons on Youtube, her foreign newsfeeds and random sites have made her believe that they're a normal part of the TCP protocol or something.

        To 99.99% of the world they are more useful than knowing anything about the TCP protocol.

        • FB's 600 million people are only a small 10% of the world population, though :)
          More seriously, the problem is those FB Like and Share buttons that people hold onto for dear life probably won't be here in 10 years. Then what?

          Remember unmaintained Geocities pages made 10 years ago sporting dozens of broken images and broken links (and then Geocities itself going under a few years ago along with legacy Tripod communities and tons of webrings.)

          All I see is those senior citizens taking their first PC-netizen ste

  • At least there's alternatives. I prefer Disqus [disqus.com] for my blog. It is easy to add, it lets someone else handle the login/password stuff, and doesn't have the whole Facebook/real name problem.

  • Arrogance of Disqus. (Score:5, Informative)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Saturday March 05, 2011 @02:24PM (#35390724) Homepage

    As I wrote to the Atlantic after being blocked for not having a Disqus account, "Why does the Atlantic presume to require me to enter into a contractual relationship with a third party to communicate with your editors?"

    The Disqus terms allow them to spam you and to send your information to advertisers. [disqus.com]: "We use Personal Information ... to provide you with information and offers from us or third parties that we believe you may find useful or interesting, including newsletters "

    The U.S. Government negotiated better terms [webcontent.gov] from Disqus. The Goverment made them take out the bad stuff. If your site wants to use Disqus, demand to use the Federal terms, not the standard terms.

    • I'm not saying you're wrong, but you've left out a seemingly important qualifier from the same paragraph:

      "We may permit our vendors to access your Personal Information, but only in connection with services that they perform for us and not to use for their own purposes."

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Animats ( 122034 )

        "We may permit our vendors to access your Personal Information, but only in connection with services that they perform for us and not to use for their own purposes."

        That refers to their suppliers, not their advertisers and data customers.

    • It is easily overlooked, but I don't think demanding the same waiver that the U.S. Government did in item B of the negotiated ToS is fair.

      "B. Public purpose: Any requirement(s) set forth within the TOS that use the Company site and services be for private, personal and/or non-commercial purposes is hereby waived."

      Seems a bit pretentious to demand being able to use it for commercial purposes. Other then that, those look like a decent ToS, too bad you have to be big and powerful enough to negotiate to get th

  • I really don't get it.

    How does this differ from Goggle's embedded JS (AdSense, Analytics) ? Why no one seems to worry about privacy on other sites, but insists that Facebook has severe privacy issues ?

    If you're all concerned about privacy, refrain from putting that information on the net. And that's true for *all* service providers out there, not only FB, not only Google, not only Microsoft. All.

    Besides, the /. article summary is completely biased. There is absolutely no reference to privacy concerns on the

  • Am I allowed to mark something as "Not like"???!?!??!?!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by hduff ( 570443 )

      Am I allowed to mark something as "Not like"???!?!??!?!

      Mark it as "F-ing Hate".

      We need more choices.

  • There is a radio button option right next to the comment field that lets you choose if the comment post on your facebook wall. So if you chose that I assume you're facebook friends wouldn't all be poking everything you comment on the internet about.
  • 127.0.0.1 facebook.com www.facebook.com

  • Just expressing my nerdrage towards this topic in a "constructive" manner.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by fmayhar ( 413222 )

      I dunno, I kind of like "anviled" for "unveiled," particularly after all the unwanted interface changes I've had to deal with over the years.

      Much like Gnome has anviled the whole "no minimize button" thing...

  • My local newspaper (www.edmontonsun.com) had replaced their commenting system with an exclusive Facebook system. It has stayed regardless of complaints by the public and that comments have decreased tenfold. It has ostensibly been touted as a "security" feature, though the hard core trolls quickly made fake FB accounts. I wonder what kind of backroom deal was tempting enough to get this large company to ruin their public image that badly?

  • TechCrunch is one site that already uses this.

  • So, Facebook is trying to take over the market for snap-in comment systems from Disqus [disqus.com] and IntenseDebate [intensedebate.com]. I think I would prefer a healthy competition between these two and other startups, rather than Facebook domination.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Zorque ( 894011 )

      Despite the fact you think social interaction is "attention whoring", one or two people have a Facebook account so they can catch up with old friends or keep up with current ones. Novel idea, I know.

    • Convore [convore.com] Just saw this on the twit network a couple of days ago, from the same people that brought us Pownce.com. They seem to fall somewhere between irc, twitter, Facebook, and a forum. So far, I like it, and am looking at it as a replacement for comments. Just gotta figure out what features I want. P.S. Being able to sign in using Facebook, twitter, Google, and openID is a good thing. These companies transfer data securely, and you don't have to enter in your info time and again. This is a security risk un
  • ...more facebook. I'll continue to post my comments to /dev/null thanks.

  • I don't want my opinion on the web among a variety of topics to be linked back to me.
    I've already made enough mistakes using my real name at times I shouldn't have.

  • truthout.org. now if any site should know better than to trust facebook......
  • Is that like "unveiled," or is it a new geekspeak word that I've not been made privy to?

  • Better than trying to create a login for every random site that decides you need to log in just to leave a comment.

    And no, I hardly ever actually create a random account just to comment on. But you know what, I might actually just leave a comment if I'm already logged into facebook and it's easy.

  • I've hated this "feature" for a while now. Even if I don't use it, they'd theoretically know what site I'd been to when I load the images from their server, right? If nothing else, it's the most obnoxious script that doesn't install malware since it makes my browser contact Facebook 4 times a second - then I stop it - then it starts again, so I have to disable Javascript to have a moment's peace and privacy. Not that the privacy really counts at that point; it's gone.

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