Hi, I’ve been using CosCulture’s Facebook/Social Media Icon add-in for a few years. But I have noticed that Firefox’s Facebook Container disables this. Privacy is important, especially on the internet, but I value my site visitors being able to “like” my web pages on Facebook if they wish.
Does anyone know of a work around for this, or a different app that will still allow visitors to my sites to ‘like’ my pages on Facebook, whatever browser they are using?
I think anything that’s using the standard facebook-plugin API is going to be subject to this.
It’s only a small percentage of users that use Firefox (globally about 4.9%), and of those how many are using the Facebook Container extension? Of course, there are other extensions like Disconnect that also will stop “source URI” from happening.
If the user chooses to use these kinds of extensions (a very small percent of users) then you probably should respect their wishes. You could put a manual link on the site that would take them to the FB page that they would like?
Thank you Doug, that’s very helpful, especially the percentages. If I hadn’t been a Firefox user myself I wouldn’t have noticed it. So it’s good to know that it is a relatively small percentage of people who use Firefox. If more browsers add containers like this then I guess it will have more of an impact.
There’s similar privacy extensions available for every browser. All the major browsers also offer some kind of ”Incognito Mode” or private browsing.
I haven’t seen any stats on what percentage of people use any of these, but I think the numbers are growing.
The reality is that companies like facebook, Google, and others make there fortune invading people’s privacy. Facebook doesn’t charge for using their services, so they make money with ads and selling information about the users.
Just a minor precautionary note I think is worth adding:-
The browser market share statistics take into account all the millions of PCs in the corporate world and internet usage from large population regions (like India and China). Both these factors add a sizeable “skew” to the browser market statistics (think lots of old computers and state-owned web browsers like Baiidu and Yandex that masquerade as Chrome). Naturally there are many people in these demographics who may not necessarily ever come to the sorts of websites we build.
As a prime example, a popular web browser statistics website is quoting today that Firefox only has a 5.5% market share. It is also claiming that Mac OS X users only makeup 3.5% of total visits to websites.
I am certain that if you are collecting your own analytics and drill-down into the browser statistics, the usage of Firefox and operating systems like Mac OS X would be a lot higher. Possibly closer towards a quarter or a third of all the traffic you are getting.
No one is right or wrong! You see, the trouble is that there isn’t really any definitive browser market share statistics available that are truly reliable. A lot depends on the type of website you are building and your target audience.
Unfortunately “Facebook” and “privacy” don’t really go hand in hand together! Data is a prized commodity (equivalent to oil and gold in previous centuries) that big businesses crave.
Firefox and Brave web browsers both have similar “container” functions, to protect user privacy. There are other web browsers and extensions that do the same. Laws like GDPR, DSVGO, APEC-CBPR and CCPA mean that website users now need the right to opt-out of potentially harmful tracking.
Even a simple ‘like’ button can pull several megabytes of scripting from a third party website. This virtual ‘window’ can give social media platforms free roaming access to monitor all your website users and collect data - which they can resell. Scary stuff, when you think about it. For this reason, Firefox and other more ethical web browser providers are adding options to block invasive tracking.
I just started using Microsoft Edge to try it out for a bit. Although Microsoft runs Bing, which is definitely ad-revenue driven – ads are not necessarily the driving factor of Microsoft. Edge comes with some very solid tracker blocking built in – although you have to flip a switch if you want to turn it all the way to maximum blocking.
It’s an interesting twist since Microsoft is using Chromium (the core of Chrome) which is Google’s that google forked from Apple’s WebKit to take in their own direction. Rebuilding Google’s own tech to block Google’s tracking (and facebooks, etc.).
Brave is similar. Another browser based on Chromium, but adds more privacy features. All good stuff and stuff to watch.
About browser market share: Will’s right. And the important takeaway for me… know your audience.
It’s the same for marketing. It’s the same for advertising. And it’s the same here too – in web development. Any time you need to communicate to customers just make sure you’re communicating in the way that they like. Knowing what browser they use is just the very tip of the communication iceberg.
