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In some way it makes sense, as you ditch the whole dynamic part of your page generation, allowing you to effectively use a static dump for your website. You can then update that periodically. Facebook is left to pick up all the hosting hassles and expense. Also you tap into the Facebook ecosystem. Having said that I doubt I'd even leave a Facebook comment on another website, I haven't yet.

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There are middle grounds though - if you want to have a mostly-static site, and still allow dynamic comments.

There are some self-hosted systems out there, including my trivial e-comments code: https://github.com/skx/e-comments/

Perhaps that is what they already had. If they were to use your app, they'd still have to manage and carry the costs associated. That probably isn't their main motivation.

I remember a few years ago whenever you clicked on a Guardian news link in Facebook it would try and get you to sign up to their Facebook app/plugin, that would then publish on your timeline what you'd been reading, let alone commenting on. I thought that was a bit ghastly.

I'm assuming that when you make a comment through Facebook on the Huff post, it displays on your timeline or some such, providing additional reach for the story.

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