There’s been a lot of debate around Facebook’s new commenting system, particularly due to the fact it is currently being tested on Techcrunch.
Matthew Ingram does a good job of summarising at GigaOm, although the heart of the debate seems to be in the comments section of Robert Scoble’s post (I pop up a couple of times in the comments!). There are various reasons for allowing a choice of commenting profile, whether or not that includes the facility for anonymity in an easy or more complicated manner – such as creating a fake Facebook account. But I think I can summarise one major flaw in the test and reactions so far.
When UK pubs had a reputation for violence, they’d introduce a dress code requiring shoes. That’d work for a couple of weeks. And then you’d find yourself in fights with the same people, but in slightly smarter clothes.
On a more analytic level, there are a variety of reasons for not using a commenting system which currently rests on the shoulder of one company.
- You may want to keep Facebook personal, and use Twitter/LinkedIn/your blog or site as your professional reference.
- You may not your Facebook profile to be a mess of comments you’ve left around the web.
- You may wish to be anonymous to voice your authentic opinion whilst minimising the repercussions either personally or career wise.
- Facebook is blocked by a number of organisations, preventing commenting from people in the workplace.
- Whilst I may choose a relatively public online persona, my friends and family haven’t chosen to participate in my online life in the same way. And whilst Facebook has privacy controls, I don’t fancy checking 500-odd people have the right settings in place before I post on Techcrunch. Or want any of them involved if I choose to disagree with something on there and annoy someone.
- Blog comments have long been one way of creating community between bloggers, whether or not those comments are seo-friendly ‘do follow’ links or ‘no follow’. If someone posts a great comment on my site, I’d like them to get the small reward of a direct link to their site, if anyone wants to find out more. Not reward Facebook for doing nothing. And judging by the SEOMOz toolbar’s ‘NoFollow’ indicator, the Facebook comments are followed links back to Facebook everytime.
- There are viable alternatives already out there – for instance Disqus, as used on this blog. Pick whichever ID you’re comfortable with, and use it!
- The comment culture is built by the culture of the site – rather than using technical solutions, perhaps it’s more sensible for the TC team to look at why they generate so many antagonistic or crap anonymous comments. Besides their size and audience, perhaps the fact that they may sometimes stray into tabloid linkbait might contribute? Look at the difference between similar sites in terms of technology e.g. Digg vs Reddit vs Hacker News, for example. All three allow link sharing, but the quality of discussion is better on Reddit and Hacker News in my opinion, because there’s more of a community on both.
- Facebook Comments has code in it which would have allowed Google and Twitter logins, but was removed for some reason – and as a company with an immense userbase, they’ve got no vested interest in allowing a wider range of logins.
- Following a VRM principle would suggest that the content and data created is mine, and I should be allowed to choose how, when, and why I share it.
- And finally, there may be times when I might have a legitimate reason to not share a blog comment, for example, on Facebook. Perhaps I’m enquiring about a present or a recipe as a surprise for my partner (Remember Facebook Beacon?). Perhaps I want to describe a personal experience which may relate to my family. Maybe I’m commenting on a site which I don’t want to necessarily be associated with or advertise because I want to disagree with what they’ve written.
I’m all for quality conversation, but as you’d imagine, I don’t think I’ll be installing Facebook Comments anytime soon… Am I making the right decision?
Definitely, on the point that it’s best to keep a line between Business / Personal on networks like Facebook.
Points 1+2+6 = right decision in my book.
I have no beef with Facebook for making this possible but we all have to draw the line somewhere.
Cheers… Glad I’m not alone on this one!
Agreed, business and personal are separate. I am careful not to “friend” my business associates in Facebook because I really want them separate
“You may not want your Facebook profile to be a mess of comments” – false alarm: there’s a “post to Facebook” checkbox in every Facebook Comments plugin. Deselect it, and your comment won’t be posted on Facebook.
“You might want to keep Facebook personal” – false alarm: you can post as a Facebook page (i.e. your business persona).
“Facebook Comments have no vested interest in a wider range of logins” – false alarm: Yahoo and AOL logins are already there, and they’ve pledged to add more in time.
“Content and data I’ve created is mine” – false alarm: Facebook don’t claim any rights over your comment, other than those they have to for service provision. Facebook Comments are also fully exportable by site admins, using their own SQL service. (And you’re using Disqus here, which has similar issues).
“There may be times I don’t want to share a comment” – false alarm: there’s a “post to Facebook” checkbox in every Facebook Comments plugin. Deselect it, and your comment won’t be posted on Facebook.
Finally, “You may wish to be anonymous” – in most cases (not all) cowardly anonymous rants contribute to a poorer experience online. My experience on Media UK is that anonymity is a considerable block to civil conversation. My initial experience with attempting to make a false Facebook user specifically to post comments has failed at the first hurdle – they don’t display to anyone else except my fake account.
I do think that Facebook blocks are a concern. But I think that most of your objections are either false, or based on an unrealistic premise.
OK – assuming the average commenter remembers to check the checkbox each time, that does allay some fears.
But you’re making a number of assumptions:
1. People generally don’t have a Facebook business page to choose as their profile – take a look at the average Techcrunch comments and you’ll see almost exclusively personal profiles. Plus there’s not a Facebook page which represents me as well as my actual website.
2. So Facebook have included 2 massive but fading logins, and promised to introduce more. So are they going to include their big rivals Google and Twitter, despite the fact the code already included them until the last minute? Or OpenID, which has existed for ages as an open login system?
3. I’m not suggesting Facebook claims ownership of my comments in a usage manner – I’m suggesting that limiting the ways in which I can contribute and share that data with another service is potentially damaging and limiting.
4. Cowardly anonymous rants do contribute to a poorer experience, but there are genuinely useful, insightful, and amazing things which can also be shared by people who wish to remain anonymous.
The danger is that by implementing a technical solution as a magical cure against ‘cowardly anonymous rants’ you absolve yourself from the responsibility of building a genuinely useful community, you exclude a percentage of people from contributing, and you encourage an increasing duopoly of two public profiles (Facebook and Google) which could end up being the only two choices aside from being unheard.
And you still haven’t explained why an encouragement to post a worthwhile contribution (The fact that people may then visit my blog, and maystick around, or click on adverts etc), should be handed over to Facebook…