On Web sites that feature Facebook Comments

• June 24, 2011
• James Skemp
• Internet, technology

Over the past few months a number of sites have switched over to Facebook-powered comments. For the most part those sites are ones that I've never commented one, nor will comment on. However, I recently discovered that a former co-worker, Rob Lumley, switched his site over to Facebook, and recently wrote an article about it titled Add Facebook Comments to WordPress. Since I don't use Facebook comments, I figured I'd post the response I had written and tried to post anonymously, here instead.

Rob's question

For those of you who use or read this site, what do you think about Facebook comments? Does it increase or decrease your chances of commenting? Do you like not having to log in or create another user account? Or do you wish to stay anonymous?

My response

Decreases.

With all the security issues I stopped staying logged into Facebook at least a year ago. I also post very specific things to Facebook, and want very tight control over what's posted. And I quite frankly don't trust Facebook as a company.

I personally haven't left an anonymous comment in the last five years, if not more (a quick search returned comments I had left as far back as 2003, and I'm sure you can find more even further). However, there are some who would prefer not to be associated with an unpopular stance, and I suppose their ability to be able to leave comments that are not associated with their real name. After all, if they really want to leave it in a completely non-anonymous setting, they could always create a dummy account.

I've personally found DISQUS to offer a nice alternative, and plan on moving all my sites to that (when I finally get around to it - I think it's just a checkbox to enable in my platform). You can import (and export) existing comments, anonymous comments are allowed, a large variety of authentication sources are allowed, and more.

I've been using it for Log Parser Plus, and while I don't get comments (not too surprising based on the content), there has been some interaction.

• disqus