Changes to the Blog

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/03/changes_to_the.html

by anu_gupta • 13 years ago

192 35 13 years ago

schneier.com

rkudeshi• 13 years ago

I'm glad to see Schneier leading by example in removing/hiding those pervasive share buttons.

(To enable something similar for every site you go to, check out the Ghostery extension for Firefox/Chrome.)

jrabone• 13 years ago

Or if you use AdBlock, give Fan boy's Social Annoyances filter list a go.

ge0rg• 13 years ago

I am surprised he did not do that from the very beginning... I am reading his monthly newsletter and did not look at the blog too often, but on my own installations I always asked myself, how much of my users privacy I want to give up for some gain I might have (usually not much)

niggler• 13 years ago

Many readers say they dislike seeing it on other pages, but as the author said:

I especially like them because I can obsessively watch the totals see how my writings are spreading out across the Internet.

It's kinda cool to watch the realtime google analytics views during a spike

nikcub2• 13 years ago

> leading by example

He is way behind here, and we could have used his advocacy much earlier.

There have been alternate buttons, browser plugins and a movement to include no third-party scripts on the web for years.

I switched techrunch.com to the two-click solution in 2008. It didn't last long because we weren't successful in arguing why you don't want scripts from third-parties loading automatically. I sure could have used a bit of backup at that time.

mnutt• 13 years ago

If you had to compromise, what about enabling the buttons on hover? You'd still have people accidentally enabling them, but fewer than if they were auto-enabled.

brianpan• 13 years ago

I've been using Ghostery since the recent HN post [1] and I really like it. It's great to go to Schneier's site and see Ghostery report nothing.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5387380

minimaxir2• 13 years ago

Why doesn't he implement his own social sharing buttons if he's worried about having visitors send data to third parties unwillingly?

I've done that on my own blog and it works well (using FontAwesome to identify services). Saves on loading time too.

jlgreco• 13 years ago

Probably less effort to just use SocialSharePrivacy.

I think the clicking twice thing is actually kind of nice anyway. Makes me as a user more aware of what is being done to be considerate of my privacy.

streptomycin2• 13 years ago

Is it as easy for a non-webdev as this https://github.com/panzi/SocialSharePrivacy

If you have a better solution, you should publicize it.

minimaxir2• 13 years ago

Define "easy for a non-webdev," because implementing a jQuery plugin isn't something I could tell my friends to do on their normal Wordpress blog.

My solution isn't "better" (nor easier to implement, due to how implemented social buttons handle social counts) because for this purpose because I primarily implemented my own buttons for performance/aesthetic reasons.

modernerd2• 13 years ago

Is there anything wrong with linking to the share pages directly to avoid the JavaScript buttons altogether? e.g.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fex...

Twitter: https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?text=My+tweet+http%3A%2F%2F...

Google+: https://plus.google.com/share?url=http%3A%2F%2Fexample.com

LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/shareArticle?mini=true&url=http:...

JoshTriplett• 13 years ago

Technically, according to the ToS of Facebook and Twitter at least, you can't use their share button icons unless you use their unmodified sharing script code. In practice, nobody cares, and lots of sites link directly to those share links.

spdy• 13 years ago

This got some media attention in germany when heise.de first put this out. Facebook immediately threatend them to terminate their app-id / violating tos etc.

But later on they backpaddled and made an offical statement that you are allowed to use an modified like button that does not resemble the orginal like button (icon).

bsimpson• 13 years ago

I worked at an ad company that was very keen on social sharing. Having played with both the bookmarklet-style links you've cited as well as the official share buttons, I've found the official buttons are better supported. I feel like one day, Facebook is just going to deprecate sharer.php and make everyone use the Like button. Tracking aside, the Like button has a much better UX, whereas sharer.php has been barely maintained in spite of all the changes to Facebook proper in the last few years. I don't think you can even suggest a link title anymore.

Anecdotally, users seem to trust native button more. If it looks like you made your own PNG and linked it to Facebook, they can't trust that you aren't going to try to do something shady to their Facebook account (or open a popup). If you use Facebook's button, it's a familiar experience without providing the publisher's site the opportunity to play man-in-the-middle.

User perception matters. Facebook's button seems to be perceived as more user-friendly than the unknown button on someone else's site, even if the unfamiliar button was designed to be less hostile than Like.

wuest• 13 years ago

> Facebook's button seems to be perceived as more user-friendly than the unknown button on someone else's site, even if the unfamiliar button was designed to be less hostile than Like.

I expect that Schneier's blog is one of the best places to start reversing that common (and understandable) perception. Given the pervasive nature of fraudulent sites focusing on Facebook, one can't blame the users--but shifting their frame of mind from "fraud is bad!" to "tracking/other invasions of privacy are bad!" is overdue.

lenazegher• 13 years ago

One (big) benefit of running a custom solution with just links rather than the official buttons is that loading links is fast. I've been trying to find some social buttons that don't have a significant impact on load time. I think I might ask my business partner to write a wordpress plugin that loads custom links/buttons.

jlgaddis• 13 years ago

> Over the next couple of days, I will transition existing subscribers off of Feedburner, but since some of you are subscribed directly to a Feedburner URL, [...]

Anybody happen to know how one might "transition existing subscribers off of Feedburner"? I have a decent amount of subscribers via Feedburner but I would also like to cease using it (the writing is on the wall) and transition existing subscribers off but, obviously, RSS readers are tied to my Feedburner URL instead of the "direct" URL on my blog.

webwanderings• 13 years ago

I believe this would be a manual process where you'd ask your subscribers to subscribe again on a different platform.

modernerd2• 13 years ago

I believe the only way of doing it is to delete the FeedBurner feed. Google redirects requests for your FB feed to the source for 15 days, then stops redirecting and shows a message with a link to the source feed for 15 days, then returns a 404: http://support.google.com/feedburner/answer/79597?hl=en

This should give keen subscribers the chance to switch over, although you will likely lose some in the transition.

If you have FeedBurner's email subscription option turned on, you'll also need to migrate those users to MailChimp or FeedBlitz or similar manually. (You can export the list from the FB control panel.)

davidjohnstone• 13 years ago

In theory, if you change the URL in the feed to point to the new location and return the XML with a 301 (Moved Permanently) response code, the feed reader will update its record to the new location.

However, Feedburner doesn't appear to allow a user to control that, so I believe all that can be done is to put up a "We're moving" blog post and have readers manually add the new blog. (Yay for vendor lock-in...)

epc• 13 years ago

Feedburner has (had) an option to CNAME your own domain name to a google domain and to use that as the feed URL. If you did that then all you need todo is change where the CNAME points to.

Foomandoonian• 13 years ago

[Wondering aloud] Would a better approach be to activate the sharing icons on mouseover? Sure, users would do this accidentally, but those concerned about privacy could learn to avoid those areas of blogs. Those who don't care (or pay attention) would get a one-click experience.

Touch users woud presumably still have to tap twice.

thomasz• 13 years ago

If I remember correctly they went the way they did to alleviate the threat of trademark litigation.

mhartl• 13 years ago

How do you "transition existing subscribers off of FeedBurner"? I'd definitely think about doing this, but I don't know how.

nikcub2• 13 years ago

I recently read up on this because I want to move my subs off. Feedburner has support for redirects and extracting email subscribers, although I still wish there was a tool that would automate a few of the steps.

See this post, which is the best I have found on the topic:

http://devilsworkshop.org/tips/how-to-leave-feedburner-witho...

benatkin• 13 years ago

This reminds me that I need http://disconnect.me/ to add support for Disqus.

_b8r03• 13 years ago

I was hoping the changes would include a commitment to him keeping to discussing things he knows about, rather than having the expert's problem of talking about things outside his domain knowledge and being considered an expert for it regardless.

febeling2• 13 years ago

Which pieces by Schneier were not well-informed, or in which ones was he talking about something outside of his domain?

_b8r03• 13 years ago

It's surprisingly common. Here's[1] the most recent example of Schneier talking out of his domain with the potential to cause damage.

The problem is that Schneier is a pundit, not a security expert. He has a good knowledge of cryptography but as a media pundit he's often asked questions outside of his domain and on responding or commenting he's referred to in the media as an expert. This is precisely what happened with his views on Airport Security. He was expressing views as an expert when he was known for cryptography and had no domain experience in airport security. Over time he's clearly researched it and had more interest in it, but his earlier stuff shows his lack of domain knowledge, yet because of his media presence he's automatically deemed an expert, and this is dangerous.

In the most recent example of security awareness training, I would bet £5 (to be donated to the Open Rights Group, the UK equivalent of the EFF) versus the equivalent in dollars to be donated to the EFF that Schneier never once in his lifetime has been involved in implementing a security awareness training programme. Yet his commentary on this marks him as an expert in the field as far as the media is concerned, and such views coming from 'an expert' may impact the security awareness programmes of many people trying to improve security in their own organisations worldwide. There's strong and well put opposition to this from Dave Kennedy[2] and Andy Ellis[3], the latter of which is Akamai's CSO, and someone who actually practices security on a day to day basis.

Just to be clear, I am generally critical of Schneier and I think it would be unfair not to state this. While I'm not a cryptography expert I recognise the work he's done in that field, however where his points have crossed over into my domain knowledge I've found his comments often show a lack of experience for someone deemed an expert by default. I don't blame him for this, but I do believe that he benefits from it and does nothing to counter the impression (that he is an expert in areas he clearly isn't).

[1] http://www.schneier.com/essay-419.html

[2] https://www.trustedsec.com/march-2013/the-debate-on-security...

[3] http://www.csoandy.com/files/why_bother_with_awareness.html

trinita• 13 years ago

This is a very interesting approach, I really like it. I use Adblock and DuckDuckGo but really like making these changes for my blog visitors as well.

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