Removing “ShareThis” From The Blog
Some visitors may have noticed that I removed the “ShareThis” plug-in from the bottom of each post. I really liked how it allowed visitors to share articles I had written through other channels such as e-mail, Digg and StumbleUpon.
Unfortunately with the changes to how ShareThis behaves and the drive by ShareThis to get you to install a toolbar into your browser when you click on it. Along with the privacy and security concerns this action raises I have decided that it would be better to stop using ShareThis for the benefit of my readers until I can determine a better solution.
It is all about control, I control very much what links out from this website and I control how my content is used. As a creator and a publisher that personal control is important to me, but with the drive by ShareThis to link off to sites I did not directly authorize, or the encouragement to install arbitrary pieces of software on to your computer I feel that this is abdicating control to a sociopathic entity that may not have the best intentions of either my readers or me at heart.
If I want to hand over that much control to a non-rational entity then I might as well shut down this website and my video game company and go work for someone else.
You may think that this is an over-reaction, or that it really means nothing at all, but it is by the slow drip-drip-dripping that mountains are eroded. It is about personal liberty, it is about control, me controlling my content and my creative labours, someone else attempting to control it too, however subtle, however minor, and without my permission.
Perhaps I am not the only one to think this way, a number of other popular blogs have quietly removed ShareThis without any fanfare or ceremony.
On a technical note, I am unable to make the classic" ShareThis 1.5 work with the current version of WordPress which is rather disappointing.
Update: I managed to get the Classic version to work just fine. It seems that when it was decompressed from the archive that it was moved down one directory too far.
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