Why Facebook's new reading apps are so darned annoying

Major news outlets are increasingly using Facebook apps as a way to get their content in front of as big an audience as possible. But for some users, Facebook’s attempt to redefine the way that people share content and the way that links work in the network makes these media apps obstructive and confusing. It’s not just new users that are having problems with Facebook’s ‘frictionless sharing’, but experienced web gurus like ReadWriteWeb’s Marshall Kirkpatrick and CNet’s Molly Wood. Indeed, last week, I had my own rant about Facebook and the new media apps that are flooding my updates. I often see stories on The Washington Post or The Guardian, (where I used to work), that I want to read but when I click on them I’m asked to install an app instead. Finally last Friday, I had had enough. I saw an interesting headline but when I clicked the link I was confronted, yet again, with the infuriating request to install an app. This time, I went to the original news site and tried to find the story. I couldn’t, so went to Google News and found the story on a competitor’s site. It prompted me to fume:

“I really, really, really hate the new Facebook media apps. Just show me the story I want. I don’t want to have to install an app and then mess around the damn sharing settings just to read a story.”

To me, the app was a speed bump, something that slowed me down from reading a story that I wanted to read. [caption id=“attachment_135503” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“AFP”]  [/caption] After ranting, former Guardian colleague Meg Pickard, who heads their community efforts, explained on Twitter that all I had to do was to “decline/revoke auth”, in other words, click cancel, and I’d be redirected to the story on the Guardian site. It also means that once you’ve clicked cancel on these new apps that you won’t have to do it again. To be fair to The Guardian, this was explained on their app page, but it wasn’t clear that all I had to do was click cancel once and then I wouldn’t be pestered by the app ever again. Building backlash From a media business standpoint, I realise why The Guardian, The Washington Post and others have done this. Some 700m people worldwide are on Facebook, and Facebook allows them to keep all of the revenue from ads that they have in the app. The Guardian said last month that one million users had installed its Facebook app, less than a month after it was launched. However, as a user, I hate the apps. They suddenly break the way that sharing and links work. More than that, the apps introduced something called Seamless Sharing. Unmodified, many of the apps just post everything you read into your Facebook updates without the need for you to take any action. As a journalist, I read a lot, and I don’t want to spam my friends with my overactive reading habits. It would be overwhelming. Nor do I always want to let everyone know everything that I’m reading, both for professional reasons and reasons of personal privacy. Was I just being a web snob? I thought I might be the only one, but as I soon found out that I wasn’t alone. A chorus of friends voiced their agreement on Facebook and Twitter, but more than my friends agreement, a rising number of prominent voices on the web are also slating the apps and Facebook’s ‘seamless sharing’. Molly Wood of high profile US tech site CNET wrote “ How Facebook is ruining sharing”. Echoing my view that it’s perfectly understandable why publishers want you to add everything to Facebook, she said:

“It’s all just part of the plan. The problem, really, is that the plan is turning out to be really annoying in practice.”

She goes as far to say that all of the auto-posting is actually breaking sharing by over-sharing. Sharing was a way to cut through the vast number of things clamouring for our attention on the internet, but over-sharing will “bury the gems”, she said. It will also make it even more difficult for those viral hits to rise through the clutter. She dislikes the service so much that she says she is “afraid to click any links on Facebook these days”. I was getting to that point too until last week when I finally lost my temper publicly. Now, I know that I simply hit cancel, and as long as I’m using the same computer and same browser, I’ll never be bothered by these app installation requests again. Joining the chorus condemning the new Facebook feature is Marshall Kirkpatrick of ReadWriteWeb, one of the leading voices on Web 2.0 and social media. He’s a level-headed writer who rarely writes rants. However, you can tell he’s barely keeping his cool in writing about seamless sharing. He says there is a backlash growing against the way it currently works and added:

“I think this is a violation of the relationship between the web and its users. Facebook is acting like malware."

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He says that the app install page is a “violation of reasonable user expectations”. You don’t expect to have to click cancel to be taken to the page you wanted in the first place.

“That hijacking of your navigation around the web is the kind of action taken by malware. It’s pushy, manipulative and user-hostile.”

When services breaks the way the web normally works, the developers better have a really good reason for doing it. For me and for a lot of other internet users, Facebook hasn’t made the case for why its new apps are better for finding the content that I want or for sharing it with my friends and readers.