I think you meant to type:
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Has anyone from BB ever offered an explanation for this apparent dissonance? I mean, I get it if the answer is “we want to make money, and these people give us money for letting them do this,” and it almost certainly boils down to just that, but I wonder if there is some other purported rationale?
I guess we’ll always be dumb fucks to some.
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I have many mouths and all i can do is scream
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As far as i know its fairly well stated, which i appreciate. Though i still make sure to block trackers when possible. Would not mind supporting BB in other ways if it meant doing away with trackers and the like but not sure how sustainable that is… in the meantime i can always hope it might be a thing some day.
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I was more referring to the dissonance between unyielding criticism of FB (which is warranted, make no mistake) and using things like Facebook Connect in the site. If there is an explanation beyond “it makes us money,” it’s not in the policy.
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Better than complaining endlessly, yet still continuing to frequent the site.
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It’s for the revenue. It’s also a necessity for anyone that’s not a large corporation, you have to go where the people are if you want to bring in outside traffic. If BB went entirely off Facebook, and any other big site they would stagnate and inevitably fail. So just because they need to use social media does not mean they cannot criticize it, if anything it gives them more reason to do so.
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And the staff has been pretty forthcoming about that from the start; the bottom line is that the community doesn’t pay to use this site, and revenue to keep it up and running has to be generated somehow.
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I should be clear, I’m not suggesting that their use of FB means that they can’t criticize it, and I assumed that your explanation was exactly what was at play: we need/want to make money at this, so we use Facebook to do so.
What I was asking above is whether anyone from BB had explored the issue we’re talking about directly (other than simply saying they were doing it via the privacy policy) and the dissonance that exists. Again, to be clear, I’m not saying this is the biggest issue around or that this is some monumental moral failing, but it is an interesting dissonance as your own post recognizes above.
Of course, some people will bristle at this discussion and pretend that “why do you use the site if you hate it so much?” is a thoughtful response to having a grown-up discussion about issues like this, or that the site being free somehow means that privacy issues are somehow off-limits, but I appreciate you not doing so.
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Lick, lick…
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I also don’t mind having a conversation about these things (i do it all the time), though perhaps the answer will ultimately need to come from BB staff. I can only give my interpretation on matters, but i am confident that BB is very forthcoming about their intentions for the site.
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I couldn’t, even if I tried…
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No way.
No information is passed back to FB using this mechanism. They authenticate an email address as being owned by that user in facebook. The information sharing is one-way.
This was absolutely not the way these relationships were confirmed between FB and others, and why would you need to? Both had email addresses, I’m sure facebook let them stream using email address in a dedicated API or somesuch.
As far as us offering authentication options - I would much rather folks use google/fb/github/twitter to authenticate (and take advantage of their suspicious login detection) that use shitty passwords on their accounts here because they use the same password everywhere or they use an easy to remember password or whatever.
Your best bet, though, is to use a password manager and two-factor authentication with a local password. The chance of someone getting access to an account in that situation is incredibly small. But in place of that, using the secure auth of Google/FB/Twitter/Github is a good alternative.
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puts on tinfoil beanie
That’s what the man wants you to think! smash the machine!
takes off tinfoil beanie
you are probably right, but you know someone’s going to take it in the context I just did. 
Never underestimate the ability of making a buck cloud one’s judgement of what is ethically or morally right.
Excellent
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puts tinfoil beanie in the industrial grinder normally used to make thermite
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I’ll just answer for FB: " (Since the news of this won’t go away…) …we’re sorry. We will look into this and make adjustments."
An insincere apology is all that’s needed!
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I have, over and over and over, explained this.
The choice is 1) generate revenue while also decrying the situation we and other independent publishers find themselves in, or 2) cease to exist. It’s no more “weird” than a franchisee complaining about policies forced upon it by a parent company, sportsball players complaining about policies forced upon them by teams/leagues/unions, or other situations where a captive member nonetheless takes issue with the status quo.
The “weird” idea, to me, is this notion that “if you use something, it’s wrong to complain about it”. Are you going to stop using electricity because your provider generates electricity with coal? No? Well you can 1) complain about it, 2) promote alternatives, and 3) prepare yourself to switch to alternatives if they become available.
Facebook, Twitter, etc are the coal plants of social media. We need what they have to survive, but you better believe we’re going to keep pointing out their shortcomings in the hope that we can help generate the inertia needed for change to happen, while simultaneously embracing new, better platforms (the solar and wind farms of social media, as it were), as soon as they develop and, more importantly, provide tools to help us integrate with to generate traffic.
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