Facebook's new commenting system

Facebook, yesterday rolled out their new commenting system that will be rolled out to publishers and websites. It aims to replace the commenting engine on various blogs and websites that are currently mostly powered by DISQUS. Facebook definitely wants to pull more content that is on the web outside of facebook into facebook with this feature/plugin. I, for one do not like this feature at all.

Firstly, it changes the whole point of commenting on a public forum/website. I participate in the comments on a particular blog post because i like to read the views and opinions of other readers. Now, when one of the reader comments on a particular topic/article, along with his views i am shown what his facebook friends think about his comment. More often that not, these “sub-comments” if i may call so, may not be related to the article. Here is a post from TechCrunch that implemented the facebook commenting system as a test. As you can see there is a lot of noise not related to the post.

Secondly, atleast as of now it needs a facebook profile to comment and hence to participate in the discussion. Many people do not and might not want to be on facebook and these people are effectively ruled out of discussion if facebook commenting system does not allow third party login.

Thirdly, I would not want my opinions on some article on some random website to clutter the news feed of my friend on facebook. Although i agree that this feature is opt-out, it should have been an opt-in feature. Which means this feature is enabled by default. Many facebook users might be unaware of the fact that their comments on a website are being published on the their friends’ wall on facebook.

I’am glad that the Facebook Disconnect extension for chrome blocks the new facebook commenting system :)