Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Start ups, please don't force me to log in with Facebook

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 279 posts

Re: Start ups, please don't force me to log in with Facebook

#41

Post by cliffchang »

Marticus wrote: post #33
Aetius wrote: post #12

I'm sorry, but its just not worth expending the extra effort to get you signed up to my service. I can get millions of people before it even starts becoming an issue.

Forcing me to be okay with everyone and their dog seeing what I do on my own time and on a completely different site is unacceptable, and frankly just lazy on their part. That has nothing to do with "commitment." I as a consumer get nothing out of it other than a lack of privacy and the heavy-handed assumption that some startup's "service" outweighs that. No thanks, and the fact that I'm not the only one means that i…

I think you may misunderstand what signing in with Facebook does.

1) It could, potentially, provide some value to you as a user. Quora gets to suggest people to follow for you based on your Facebook friends, so your experience on there is seeded with relevant information.

2) Nothing you do on the site you signed in with is published to your Facebook profile, without your explicit consent on a dialog box.

Re: Start ups, please don't force me to log in with Facebook

#42

Post by jpeterson »

portman wrote: post #39

I have a site that requires Facebook to login. For this site, user fraud is a big concern. I would much rather have an easy way to tell if someone is a "real" person, and Facebook gives me that. If my market size goes from 1.5B to 500M because of this decision, that's fine. In our case, it's a calculated choice, like the dozens of calculated choices a startup makes every day.

I would much rather have an easy way to tell if someone is a "real" person, and Facebook gives me that.

How does Facebook give you that, exactly?

Re: Start ups, please don't force me to log in with Facebook

#44

Post by portman »

patrickmclaren wrote: post #15
gojomo wrote: post #2

What would you think of a site that lets you use Facebook to login, or charges a Metafilter-like token $5 fee?

Is charging for a token seriously a comparative option? C'mon, when did authentication become so difficult?

I think he meant "token" as in "trivial", not as in an OAuth authentication token.

Re: Start ups, please don't force me to log in with Facebook

#45

Post by portman »

jpeterson wrote: post #42
portman wrote: post #39

I have a site that requires Facebook to login. For this site, user fraud is a big concern. I would much rather have an easy way to tell if someone is a "real" person, and Facebook gives me that. If my market size goes from 1.5B to 500M because of this decision, that's fine. In our case, it's a calculated choice, like the dozens of calculated choices a startup makes every day.

I would much rather have an easy way to tell if someone is a "real" person, and Facebook gives me that. How does Facebook give you that, exactly?

Several ways, none of which is individually full-proof, but taken together they are a very good indicator:

- Does the user have a profile photo, or is it the default user icon?

- How many friends does the user have? (Generally 0, 1, or 2 is highly suspicious)

- Does the user have a real name? [Edit: we have a blacklist of fake names.]

Re: Start ups, please don't force me to log in with Facebook

#46

Post by [deleted] »

portman wrote: post #39

I have a site that requires Facebook to login. For this site, user fraud is a big concern. I would much rather have an easy way to tell if someone is a "real" person, and Facebook gives me that. If my market size goes from 1.5B to 500M because of this decision, that's fine. In our case, it's a calculated choice, like the dozens of calculated choices a startup makes every day.

[deleted]

Re: Start ups, please don't force me to log in with Facebook

#47

Post by bl4k »

portman wrote: post #39

I have a site that requires Facebook to login. For this site, user fraud is a big concern. I would much rather have an easy way to tell if someone is a "real" person, and Facebook gives me that. If my market size goes from 1.5B to 500M because of this decision, that's fine. In our case, it's a calculated choice, like the dozens of calculated choices a startup makes every day.

I have two fake Facebook accounts that I use to sign in to services. I even have a good rep on Quora using a completely fake name.

Forcing Facebook because you think it will give you real people and verified accounts is wrong.

Re: Start ups, please don't force me to log in with Facebook

#48

Post by qq66 »

jpeterson wrote: post #42
portman wrote: post #39

I have a site that requires Facebook to login. For this site, user fraud is a big concern. I would much rather have an easy way to tell if someone is a "real" person, and Facebook gives me that. If my market size goes from 1.5B to 500M because of this decision, that's fine. In our case, it's a calculated choice, like the dozens of calculated choices a startup makes every day.

I would much rather have an easy way to tell if someone is a "real" person, and Facebook gives me that. How does Facebook give you that, exactly?

Most people don't go to the trouble of registering a fake Facebook account to sign up for a random web service. If you want to be even more strict, you can look for people with at least 3 friends -- most real people have more than 10 friends, and very few people with a fake account will register 4.

Re: Start ups, please don't force me to log in with Facebook

#49

Post by natabbotts »

awakeasleep wrote: post #28
itg wrote: post #8

For me it's more of a matter of privacy. I do have a facebook account but still refuse to log into any site that wants me to connect with facebook.

Sharing my connection information, some of my real life activities and hobbies, and a few private messages with Facebook seems risky enough already. When another company wants me to connect, my mind just balks.

Agreed. Knowing that the company requiring you to sign in can quite easily access all the data stored by Facebook worries me greatly. Twitter logins I have no problem with, as all my twitter info is public anyway (such is the nature of twitter), so there isn't any damage that can be done. Facebook, however, gives you no way of knowing exactly what it stores and shares, and because of this I am simply too paranoid to log in with it.

The best login system is OAuth by far - it is secure, and doesn't have any risk attached.

Re: Start ups, please don't force me to log in with Facebook

#50

Post by yock »

Maintaining a separate identity for every site across the web gets more impractical by the second. I think most people would agree that a third-party authentication service is a positive thing, but there seems to be a stigma, earned or not, surrounding Facebook that makes people hesitant to assign that responsibility to them.

I think ultimately it's going to come down to a paid, independent service. Startups can't offer this kind of thing for free as there is no trust involved in the transaction. Likewise most large companies have already traded away their trust capital for various fiscal and political gains over the course of their existence. No, there must be some legal recourse for the consumer for the moment the authenticator screws up, and the only way to transfer risk in that way is with money.

Probably the single biggest barrier to this is the widespread desire to remaining anonymous on the web. The thing it seeks to combat is precisely the thing so many value so greatly: maintaining multiple identities, personas, existences on the web.

Post reply on HN