I've run into the Washington Post link a few times on something shared by a friend that I thought I wanted to read. Once I hit the social reader page, I've bailed ... every time.
Yep, I'm the same way. Installing Apps was a novelty at one point, now I won't install anything. I've started using Facebook less and less.
Another deceptive tactic? Apparently my account has "low security". So I go in and see what my settings are adjusted to. Everything how I like it (private). But the "low security" warning sits there, in perpetuity, until I give Facebook my phone number, apparently.
That's because it considers your account low-security until you enable two-factor authentication, which having a phone with SMS allows. The number isn't to fill out your profile, and has nothing to do with privacy settings. Facebook takes security very seriously, and it would be better for everyone's safety if everyone set up two-factor, just like having everyone around you vaccinated is better for you.
They should support RFC 4226, as google does, but they still need to support SMS with the size and diversity of their userbase. Google offers SMS as well.
How long before every facebook user has a device that can do RFC 4226? I hope soon, but kind of doubt it'll happen this decade.
I guess that's one way to look at it, but your analogy is flawed. I'm mostly unaffected by anyone else having their account hacked, whether or not they've implemented two-factor authentication.
But I really believe they just want my phone number. Why do they tell me the security is "low"? Why not "medium"? What if I don't have a cell phone? Without giving them a number, I guess I live on a low security site? It's FUD, just like those popups telling me my security settings on my PC are "low", or that I have a "virus".
FYI, even if you click cancel it will still advertise you to your friends ("Rob uses this app" in the bottom left corner of the signup popup). Which seems pretty questionable.
I verified with two other friends--I saw both of them in the "so and so uses the app" section and neither of them had ever added the app (only "cancelled").
Facebook has used my profile picture in the past to advertise their "connect with email to find more friends". I will NEVER give Facebook my credentials for ANY of my email accounts.
It annoys me though that my likeness has been used in an attempt to get "my friends" to also type in their credentials.
I didn't know that. Thanks for the tip. In terms of usability, it's a deceptive way to handle opting out of installing their app. A news agency resorting to deception to promote their content ... just what I hope for from someone claiming to be an authority in something.
To be fair, it's Facebook promoting this interface and the news agencies / publishers just being too spineless to say no (dwindling readership and such) and/or really believing it will get more people to read their stuff.
I discovered that by accident. It's nice once you know about it, but the "cancel" label is very poor --- it reads much more like "forget about even trying to read this article" than "read the article and to hell with the signup page".
why do i have to "install an app" to be re-directed to an article?
these tactics just seem to me as "creative" ways to get people to agree to have more information about them published. I've yet to say "yes" to any such prompt on Facebook.
I didn't know about cancel. I guess the issue is why do we have to find out this way? It's not an expected behavior and that's going to piss a lot of people off. So there's an easy way to get what you want, it's staring you in the face, but we all ignore it because it looks as though it isn't going to do what we want. Not a good design but then again design is about choices and maybe they figured it's worth it to make people learn the hard way.
