{"id":58719,"date":"2026-09-19T15:55:27","date_gmt":"2026-09-19T13:55:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.main-vision.com\/richard\/blog\/?p=58719"},"modified":"2026-09-19T15:55:29","modified_gmt":"2026-09-19T13:55:29","slug":"the-article-in-comments-fad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.main-vision.com\/richard\/blog\/the-article-in-comments-fad\/","title":{"rendered":"The Article in comments Fad"},"content":{"rendered":"Reading Time: <\/span> 2<\/span> minutes<\/span><\/span>\n

Continuing on from yesterday’s theme of publishers harming themselves through their behaviour today I want to comment on the fad of adding hyperlinks to comments rather than directly into a post. The idea is that you can use the image you want, and by clicking to see comments facebooks counts this as engagement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s worth mentioning that if I click on a hyperlink facebook knows, and the website knows, so nothing is gained by forcing us to jump through the “comments” hoop. This is especially true since once three or four views have been expressed in a comment the rest is noise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The other issue with hyperlinks in comments is that we need to read a post, think “I want to read more” click to see the comments, click the hyperlink, click “accept cookies” because if we don’t then it will say “Well then you’ve got to pay to read this comment, and when we accept the cookies, then it says “Subscribe to read more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Facebook benefits, but publishers and normal people browsing the web do not. Facebook benefits because, with so many barriers to clicking the link, we’re less likely to leave the site. Publishers are under the illusion that they’re getting more views, and more interactions, when, in reality we’re getting more noise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We need three clicks to get out of Facebook, and then three or more to see content from another site. Six clicks every time we follow a hyperlink. If we take into account the likelihood of a paywall then it makes sense to stay in the web portal built by Facebook, rather than browsing the web. It also makes sense to get trapped within an AI chat, rather than looking for primary and secondary sources of information.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If, and when I see a Facebook account hiding the hyperlink in a facebook comment I look at the source, the headline, and I copy and paste it into a search engine, and then navigate to it that way. Why would I reward the social media utilitarians, and Facebook when I can take one or two extra steps that convert via a source I prefer, i.e. a search engine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Essentially Facebook has normalised yet another dark design pattern and social media utilitarians accept it, rather than fight it. The result is a worse experience for ordinary people using the social web.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reading Time: <\/span> 2<\/span> minutes<\/span><\/span>Continuing on from yesterday’s theme of publishers harming themselves through their behaviour today I want to comment on the fad of adding hyperlinks to comments rather than directly into a post. The idea is that you can use the image you want, and by clicking to see comments facebooks counts this as engagement. It’s worth […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18015,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"federated","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[255],"tags":[2142,9003,771,3403,9004],"class_list":["post-58719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-swiss-walks","tag-articles","tag-comments","tag-facebook","tag-hyperlinks","tag-self-defeating"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.main-vision.com\/richard\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58719","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.main-vision.com\/richard\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.main-vision.com\/richard\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.main-vision.com\/richard\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.main-vision.com\/richard\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58719"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.main-vision.com\/richard\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58719\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58720,"href":"https:\/\/www.main-vision.com\/richard\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58719\/revisions\/58720"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.main-vision.com\/richard\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18015"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.main-vision.com\/richard\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.main-vision.com\/richard\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.main-vision.com\/richard\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}