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Comment by steevdave | Hacker News Reader

While I don't use facebook's messaging except on the extremely rare occasion that someone messages me when I have their web page open, I don't think sharing a URL with someone means I LIKE the content, there are many different reasons to share a URL.

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Right, so people's main problem with this is a semantic issue and not actually anything to do with their privacy.

HN Challenge:

Make a URL shortener service which allows you to send a link to someone from within facebook - but it blocks all known FB domains and IPs from viewing said URL.

It will only take the first click on it then expire. if all the first clicks are from FB - it would mean that FB is pre-emptively scanning and tracking all URL messages - even before users actually visit.

Why would Facebook need to visit your site to record that somebody liked it?

You misunderstood me.

This would not be for likes - but for visits.

Facebook certainly does pull any pages you link to, it scans 'em for images and puts those images into the message too along with a title and excerpt. This is occasionally annoying but makes messages prettier.

I'd forgotten about that somehow. Looks like we have our smoking gun! Hard to claim its surreptitious though.

I guess I don't understand why you think Facebook is scanning/visiting links, nor why I should care about that.

Agreed: Have you see this site (http://sucks.com) it sucks. (PS: I haven't actually checked out that URL. Might be NSFW)

No, I don't want facebook to "Like" links for me if I didn't explicitly say I liked them.

I'm disappointed that http://www.suck.com hasn't been updated recently... I miss the heady days when it was the most interesting daily updated site on the information superhighway!

Then is it safe to assume that you disapprove of their like-counter-increasing when you share a link on facebook? It appears they do then too, and you may be sharing it to say "I hate this".

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