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:
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.
we 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?
Yes. My friends who are sharing their gossipy and sex-related readings have not noticed it. They're all shocked by what ends up on Facebook.
As for just using the social reader as a user — well, I shouldn't have to agree to an app and share my social graph just to read news stories. Friction Sharing is great and working already.
Facebook 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.
I 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.
It 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.
If 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.
Pet 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.
The 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".
Whether 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.
Mediocre but (afair) working alternative solution.
Create a friendlist with no-one (but yourself)
And give those apps only stream_publish permission to that friendlist.
If 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.
I 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: )
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:
Agreed. 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.
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/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.