
Why Facebook comments is a bad idea for your site - pytrin
http://www.techfounder.net/2012/08/15/dont-mix-business-and-personal-why-facebook-comments-is-a-bad-idea-for-your-site/
======
alttag
I don't particularly like the trend of sites offloading their commenting
mechanisms to Twitter, Facebook, DISQUS, etc. If it's Facebook, I'll never see
it, due to browser plugins. Twitter is often too short for a good
conversation, but if you do use it, run a script to import/display related
tweets instead of making me click. I'm not a fan of DISQUS either, partly
because I use Ghostery. (Alhough, it's good that the new version has a quick
"enable once and reload" feature.)

If the purpose of your site is to generate discussion, include a discussion
mechanism. If you like the clean look and don't want comments, expect less
feedback.

Sending users elsewhere, or requiring extra clicks to see the conversation
means less engagement. Maybe that's what some want, and use it as an effort to
separate wheat and chaff ... but frankly, that's what moderation is for.

~~~
ed209
Commenting is something I'd much rather offload to someone like DISQUS.
Creating your own commenting system either requires lots of spam management
(for an open commenting system) or forcing users to register for your service
before they can comment.

Frankly I prefer to use my existing identities to comment than have to sign up
each time on someones service just to be able to comment.

~~~
Gormo
I prefer just the opposite: I like having my identities on each site distinct
and autonomous. If everyone has a common identity across multiple sites, it
prevents any particular site from effectively evolving its own internal
community and cultural norms, and raises the stakes of participation.

~~~
dredmorbius
I segment my identities. A very few things will get my real name (or some
variant of it). Most go under a generally-topical alias of some sort or
another. I don't mind those aliases gathering their own reputation, but it's
no major loss if I decide to toss one at a later point.

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jonknee
I have Facebook resources blocked (thanks Facebook Disconnect!) so I won't
ever know if your site has Facebook comments. Even if I saw them I would never
comment using Facebook, the same as never using it to log-into a third party
service. No need to give FB the opportunity to once again change their rules
and share stuff I'd rather they not.

~~~
tolos
I did not know about this plugin before now. I almost feel like I can start
reading political articles on news websites again. Thanks!

~~~
jonknee
The lack of Like buttons is also a blast of fresh air.

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DanielBMarkham
I have a bunch of sites, and I've experimented with various options. (Example
of one site with FB comments on: <http://www.hn-
books.com/Books/Slaughterhouse-Five.htm> ) I've also tried LiveFyre comments
and a few other systems.

If there's a benefit to FB commenting by providing more engagement, I'm not
seeing it. I love the LiveFyre system, but I'm not seeing a lot of engagement
there, either.

My opinion is that any little thing you do to make commenting harder by even a
tiny amount has a huge impact on participation. To make matters worse, you're
giving up sometimes valuable feedback and participation content to Facebook,
which just monetizes it instead of you.

Maybe there's a way to make it pay off. If so, I'd like to hear it.

~~~
showerst
I think a fair bit of it depends on your needs for moderation, and what you're
comparing to.

When you say you're not seeing a lot of engagement with FB/Livefyre, were
those sites seeing engagement before with a worse commenting system?

We switched ForeignPolicy.com over to livefyre from the Drupal built-in system
and saw a big increase in participation, both in average comments per article
and the number of multi-message 'conversations' that people were having in the
comments section. That said, we already have an engaged audience, and a big
chunk of the benefit may have been new moderation tools that let us reduce
spam/trolls.

I don't think that any system will create engagement out of thin air, except
in the rare case of a site with a rabid fan base and no commenting/forum
system, but i'd argue that systems like disqus and livefyre make people more
likely to jump in because they don't need to create an account with you.

~~~
memmullen
As someone who reads ForeignPolicy.com every day, I wish you guys would use
Disqus. Curious as to why you decided to go with LF over Disqus.

~~~
showerst
I'm curious about what you dislike about LF. I could also explain our choices
a bit, but I'd rather offline that.

tim.showers@foreignpolicy.com

------
shell0x
I think it's a bad practice to outsource data like comments in general. I
prefer keeping controll over the comments. This way the commenters don't get
monitored/analyzed by Facebook or another US company, which is important,
especially as a European. Maybe Facebook don't like what the commenter wrote
on your site and just censor the comment and you won't even realize it.
Comments should stay on decentral places, which is important to avoid attacks
against the freedom of speech.

~~~
Karunamon
>Maybe Facebook don't like what the commenter wrote on your site and just
censor the comment and you won't even realize it.

Does this ever happen in any appreciable amount? The TOS for what FB will kill
a comment for is pretty reasonable.

As to decentral places, _meh_. I don't blog for a living, and don't have time
to deal with spammers, trolls, and asshats. Something like Disqus or
Intensedebate handles that nicely, with no nebulous "freedom of speech"
issues. Heck even Facebook, to a lesser extent.

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brudgers
IMO, a Facebook account shouldn't be a prerequisite for any action on the
internet other than using Facebook.

~~~
PCheese
You do not necessarily need a Facebook account to post on the comments plugin.
See the "other login providers" section on the docs:
[https://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/comme...](https://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/comments/)

~~~
droithomme
That is using Facebook, and it makes use of the implicit, non-consensual
Facebook shadow accounts that Facebook creates for all anonymous users, who
are extensively tracked across the internet.

Many people have blocked all domains associated with Facebook in order to
maintain privacy and thwart their internet-wide tracking.

------
JumpCrisscross
Sorely needed: "Why generalising from specific anecdotes is a bad idea for
your life".

Have sites that enabled Fb commenting experienced a decrease in viewership?
Commenting? Quality of comments? How does this vary based on the audience in
question?

Some of these questions have academic answers, some don't. The proper way to
figure this out is by by experimenting. Not affirming diktats from your
personal beliefs.

~~~
pytrin
This was not a research paper, this was an opinion piece on Facebook comments

~~~
sadga
Why does someone who'se never used _my_ site have an opinion on it?

~~~
tolmasky
Well the article was actually mainly presented from the point of view of a
commenter (as opposed to blog author). Notice all three points were about why
he didn't like to comment via FB (vs. not liking to _receive_ comments via
FB). It was "I don't like commenting on FB, so you probably shouldn't use it"
vs. "I have experienced less traffic when using FB comments, and thus am
extrapolating that you might as well".

Thus, despite not visiting your site, he can still have an opinion about not
liking to potentially comment on it if it contains FB comments. This is not
some weird generalization or overstepping his bounds, its the same as someone
saying "I don't like sites that have ads so think twice about littering your
site with them" and then someone else responding "BUT how do you know if
you've never seen _my_ site?!".

------
thatusertwo
Facebook comments are also bad for your viewers who don't have Facebook... Me
for example.

~~~
LoganCale
And viewers who block the Facebook domain in /etc/hosts.

~~~
chimi
I also block disqus and have noticed a lack of comments increasing over time,
which really isn't a problem at all...

------
franze
i did some simple number crunching some time ago (> 8 months ago) on some
clients sites and on a few private and friendly (which gave me access to their
data) web-properties. it wasn't a big sample (6 sites all in all) but well,
it's the data i had. outcome:

using fb comments - on average over all sites - always increase the valid
comments you will get - and compared to old wordpress-standard-installations,
decreases spam (the difference was between "a lot of spam" and "nothing")

i did not apply a quality metric, but reading over the (valid, not spam)
comments i could not determine a (subjective) trend in either (good / stupid)
direction.

yeah, i'm not a big fan of fb comments either, but well, if your blogs goal is
to get comments (for whatever reason) then i would advise for the fb comment
plugin.

and: it would be cool if you prove me wrong (with data).

i think this is a good time as any to quote Jim Barksdale, former CEO of
Netscape: "If we have data, let’s look at data. If all we have are opinions,
let’s go with mine."

~~~
dredmorbius
Your data do also inherently self-select unless you're conducting your
research very carefully. Once you throw up a "FB required for comments"
requirement, you're going to start shooing away many people who'd otherwise be
interested in participating. Some/many will simply never come back.

FB has a penetration of roughly 50% of the population in first world developed
nations, and that seems to be its zenith (usage has actually started falling
in the US and other early-adopter regions). So you're excluding roughly half
your potential participants.

How the FB usage pattern distributes across your target/desirable population
is of course another question. I don't have the answers on that.

~~~
franze
as i said before: i would love that somebody comes up with a better study and
proves my mini sample wrong, sadly i know none.

i did a similar research of fb enabled signeups vs. non fb signups (on desktop
web apps) - outcome: if you enable signups via fb, you get more signed up
users.

i think the pro/con fb comments/signups discussion should be based on data
(data that is easy to get on our own webproperties) and not on opinions.

------
alpb
I am using DISQUS (version 2012) for a while on my personal blog and I am very
pleased. I get more comments than the times I installed FB Comments, I get
more traction and people actually share through DISQUS star button.

Here's a blog post I wrote about switching to DISQUS
[http://ahmetalpbalkan.com/blog/disqus-addressed-my-
concerns-...](http://ahmetalpbalkan.com/blog/disqus-addressed-my-concerns-
pretty-well/)

------
AznHisoka
It's also bad SEO-wise. User generated content can help you with long tail
rankings

~~~
Kiro
Facebook comments are crawled.

~~~
franze
if googlebot chooses to render the page, which is - in my experience - not
always the case (sometimes the fb stream got indexed, the spage got found for
it, the other time nothing, sometimes a page that got found for a comment then
lost the comment again, pretty random stuff). but yeah, if you think it's
worth it you can still fetch the fb comment stream and put it below the fb
plugin.

------
gdilla
I think one advantage of FB comments is that it supposedly cuts down on
trolls, spam, and stupid arguments.

~~~
asdfologist
You must be new to FB.

~~~
xqyz
Or to the internet in general.

~~~
gdilla
Just sayin -
[http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2012/05/starting_later...](http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2012/05/starting_later_this_week_tpm.php)

~~~
xqyz
Same site from the link in the article
(<http://labs.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/08/post-1.php>):

> Now the downsides, which are probably determinative for us. First, quite
> simply a lot of people don’t trust Facebook for reasons that range from
> quite reasonable to totally paranoid. Second, and more significant in my
> mind, is that many people don’t want to bring their true identities into the
> comments section of a political site. [...]

> For those two reasons, especially the second, we’re probably never going to
> do this.

It's like "yeah we know people probably won't like it, but fuck them."

~~~
gdilla
They also say it frees up their staff to do their jobs rather than moderating.
Nothing is perfect. They made a tradeoff.

------
bluetidepro
Title: " _Why Facebook Comments Is A Bad Idea For Your Site_ " In the article:
" _Perhaps in some contexts it makes sense_ "

Parts of the post sound very contradicting to your actually post title.

Regardless, to answer your third bullet, yes the author can setup Facebook
comments to give him/her notifications that you did leave a comment. Granted,
I guess there is no UI to let you know that the author was notified, but most
blogs (not using Facebook comments) don't have a UI for that either.

I personally like Disqus comment system on blogs because it gives you the
option to comment in various ways. It's a win-win-win!

~~~
pytrin
I am the author - The article lists reasons where Facebook comments are a bad
idea for your site, it is not a generalization.

I mention that in some cases it might make sense to have it - but in the case
of technical or professional blogs / articles, that usually is not the case.

------
mandeepj
It's optional to share your comment on your news feed so I don't know why
author is hating FB comments.

~~~
crusso
I do the same thing as the author. If I see that the comment stream is somehow
related to my FB account, I skip commenting. I don't know how they're used or
how they feed into some other FB stream.

Even if I did have a feel for how those comments currently are integrated with
other FB comment streams, none of us has any idea of how FB will change their
policies in the future that will totally wreck our personal notions of
"separation of concerns".

------
mikeleeorg
Here's a slightly different perspective.

I'm part of a group blog with an active community, and we've experimented with
various commenting systems. Our problem hasn't been getting user engagement,
it's getting quality engagement. The nature of our blog (a cultural blog)
unfortunately invites a lot of trollish and abusive comments.

We've experimented with our blogging platform's native comment system, Disqus,
LiveFyre, and Facebook. Right now, we've got Facebook Comments active. The
number of abusive comments _seems_ to have decreased, as have the number of
good comments (most probably because of the barriers of using Facebook). So
the jury is still out on which is best for us.

Looking at TechCrunch's comments, it doesn't look like Facebook Comments has
helped their quality level that much - though it's much better than Disqus.

So I'd advise understanding your audience before deciding which comment system
is best for your site. Each system has its pros & cons. You just have to
determine if the cons are worth the pros for you.

~~~
pytrin
One of the commentators on my blog (I'm the author of the article), said that
ever since TC changed to Facebook comments, he noticed a reduction in critical
comments and changed the feel into a "Yes man" type discussions. I guess it
depends on how you define quality comments - I prefer people voice their
opinions without fear of repercussions. Obviously, this thinking is not
appropriate for all cases - if you want product comments for example, by all
means Facebook comments might provide the best type.

~~~
mikeleeorg
Fortunately, we haven't gotten any "Yes man" type discussions on our blog yet.
Many of our most vocal commenters (who often state contrary opinions to ours)
took to the Facebook Comment system well, though we've lost a few too. So far,
none of the abusive trolls have come over yet.

Unfortunately, I haven't seen the lively discussions we used to get when using
LiveFyre. So there's definitely a trade-off. We're definitely not sold on
Facebook Comments yet; it's just our most recent experiment.

------
derwiki
We use the Facebook comment widget on almost all the pages on Causes.com. Two
quick comments:

\- When we run a corporate brand community (such as causes.com/att), our
clients LOVE the number of and types of comments that people leave on the
page. We've all been impressed with the quality of the comments as well.

\- Grammar filter
([http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/commen...](http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/comments/)):
adds punctuation (e.g. periods at the end of sentences), trims extra
whitespace, expands slang words (e.g. plz becomes please), adds a space after
punctuation (e.g. Hi,Cat would become Hi, Cat), and fix common grammar
mistakes (e.g. convert ‘dont' to ‘don’t’). tl;dr Comments that look good
encourage more good comments.

Facebook comments are obviously not a one-size-fits-all solution, but we've
been able to use it pretty well.

------
e12e
On a related note: Does the site get a full copy of the comments? Can you do
your own search, translate interesting discussions, go back years after
facebook have changed their api, or cancelled your dev account, and read over
an interesting discussion?

Anyone have experience with disqus in this regard?

Personally, if I enable comments on a site, it is because I hope the comments
will form a constructive part of the content of that site. I wouldn't want
half my content to disappear on account of a policy change or bankruptcy that
is entirely separate from whatever it is I am doing myself.

I've been toying with the idea of hacking together a system that allows
replying/commenting via email (effectively auto generating a mailing-list for
every post or something to that effect) -- and allowing the comment interface
to effectively become a limited webmail gateway to that list.

~~~
bentlegen
Depends on the website/publishing platform. Disqus's Wordpress plugin actually
syncs all of the comments back to the site's WP database. So if they disable
Disqus at a later date, all the comments are still there.

------
markkat
I have a FB account, but never comment with it.

I don't want my every interaction on the web connected.

I am getting tired of the social web.

------
jofo25
I think for an article or blog post, yea Facebook isn't that appropriate but
most other places I find it useful for the pure fact that I can't really be
bothered to make an account for every site I visit.

------
jack-r-abbit
I have never used the Facebook Comment piece of a site for one reason: I don't
want all the people reading THAT site to have a link right to my Facebook
page. Under normal circumstances, the chances of some random stranger getting
to me Facebook page are pretty slim. But if I comment on some article with
Facebook, my real name is right there with a link to my page. The last thing I
need it for some nut job to take issue with something I said and follow that
link.

------
trueneverland
I really hate any commenting system that requires me to register. I don't want
to have dozens of accounts just because of all these various systems for
commenting.

~~~
lmm
Isn't that an argument in favour of using Facebook? One account for the whole
web, rather than one for each individual blog.

~~~
trueneverland
I prefer name and comment, no registration system

------
andy_herbert
In my opinion comments are a bad idea for your site, unless you're fortunate
to have an exclusive audience. Yes, I am aware of the irony of this comment.

------
lucian303
It alienates those of us without a facebook account.

