Privacy-conscious social plugins

Jeremy Keithrecently bloggedabout only injecting Google Analytics code if the users Do Not Track-header is not set. This is very similar to some thoughts I’ve been having recently: The same thing should apply for social plugins as well! They track you at least as much as actual analytics code does, only to the social networks you’re not just an IP, you’re you, with full name, interests, friend lists and whatnot.

Simply including social plugins like a Facebook Like button on your site means that every time one of your visitors browse your site, their browser will gently notify Facebook about the visitors behavior on your site. From the times and Referer-headers the browser sends to Facebook when loading the script, Facebook knows what they’re reading, how long they were reading it for, how many articles read while on your site, and all sorts of stuff the reader might not at all want to share with Facebook. Facebook may or may not actually be tracking these data, but it would be silly of them not to, as with this data they can spot new, hot stuff on the web before anyone has even clicked the Like button.

So it’s much the same problem as with Jeremy’s analytics problem, only slightly simpler - only include the social plugins when the user has actually indicated that they want to share your piece with their network, and not before. Some placeholder image that looks like the Facebook like button can be shown on load, and if clicked, load the code to complete the action. There’s a double benefit to this, your site will load faster, and you’ll protect the privacy of your users.

I don’t have a working example of this yet, but it’s something I want to have for this site, so maybe there’ll be another post on this later.

On another note, welcome to my blog! Hope I’ll see you again later, there’s more to come.