Stuff I hate on Facebook and related platforms
I spoke up against this before, but it’s worth repeating again as the current trend doesn’t go in the right direction.
I dislike sites that integrate Facebook so tightly that I can’t do much without being logged in to that platform. I have a Facebook account. I don’t use much, and I don’t want to use it on other sites. The risk of loss of privacy is too great. If a website, media or company is offering a special promotion for Facebook users, or allows commenting on articles using Facebook only, then I won’t participate. When I register on a given community, I make a conscious action to associate my identity with them, for better or for worse. I want to commit to what I do, not leave a throwaway comment never to look back.
On another note, still related, I hate how Facebook doesn’t have a “dislike” option to match it’s “like” option. I can understand how they might be aiming to preserve a positive vibe to everything, but life doesn’t work that way. Sometimes, you feel strongly about an issue and would like to disagree with it, but there’s no option to do so as you’re facing only a “like” button. YouTube’s strategy on this is more interesting: allow people to rate videos “up” or “down”, then show the relative score. Installing a browser plugin to have a magical “dislike” button appearing everywhere is NOT the answer, as it’s not visible to everyone.
Some news sites have been removing their own, custom commenting scripts to only keep Facebook comments. As a result, not only do you lose the ability to downrate comments (the “dislike” option), you also lose the ability to order the comments as “oldest first”, “latest first”, or “most active”. I especially like that last one as it quickly highlights the general opinion on a given topic. Why existing systems would be replaced by the more simple Facebook integration, with a global loss of functionality, is beyond me.
Besides, what happens if Facebook shuts down, or another social network becomes much more popular? Rip the integration apart and start anew, losing all existing comments in the process? It’s a shame when news outlets lose their archive, both articles and comments, as the latter can give great insights on how an issue was perceived at some period in time.
– Doctacosa