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Comment by jackalope | Hacker News Reader

Agreed on all points, but websites that feature Like buttons or Analytics are complicit in this dubiously ethical behaviour. Webmasters should also be doing more to protect the privacy of their users. Sadly, even the ones that are supposed to be operating within FERPA or HIPAA restrictions in the US ignore this duty.

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Are there better alternatives? (I ask this question honestly)

As a web master of a very small, personal site, I find that running AddThis or something similar to be vital in generating traffic. Giving users a one click option to share my pages makes it much more likely that they will. Without that option, I have to resort to spamming message boards, Twitter, Facebook, etc manually, in order to drive traffic. I am not opposed to that option, as my site has no way of generating revenue and likely never will... I'm just looking for engagement from readers and ways to generate more readers.

This makes me wonder if there is value in someone creating a Facebook Like button, Google +1 button, etc. widget set that doesn't keep any tracking data and only sends information about a user to Facebook, Google, etc. when a user explicitly clicks on the button.

Heise developed this last year. They made a two-stage like-button which is disabled by default and sends no data to FB et al. When you first click on it, the real button loads and you can then share what you want.

http://www.heise.de/ct/artikel/2-Klicks-fuer-mehr-Datenschut... [german]

That's really interesting. I like the concept, but would most users only click once because that's what they are used to? The interface doesn't seem to be that obvious for a non-technical person.

Is there some use agreement that prevents this plugin from submitting the like programmatically?

Yep! The question is whether to give it away or try to find a way to monetize it. I'd buy it, but I'm not sure how much I'd pay for it.

I don't give a crud about the analytics of AddThis, and their menu is full of options that most will never use. The key point is sharing for the lazy. The vast majority of Internet users are never going to open their Facebook, write a wall post about something and copy/paste my link in their post. That same person, however, may be really interested in it and be willing to hit a little button that does all that stuff for them. That's all I want. I don't want to jeopardize people's privacy.

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