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Meet the Programmer Behind Social Fixer

Posted by timothy on from the social-neuterer-failed-at-the-focus-group dept.

Ars Technica profiles Matt Kruse, the developer behind Social Fixer. "Social Fixer uses JavaScript to modify Facebook's interface. It gives you dozens of options for customizing how you see Facebook: you can separate updates into tabs, enable mouse-over image previews, change the layout, filter posts from your friends, give everything a theme and even hide the bits you find disagreeable. It's a huge amount of work to keep going, but although Kruse has a tiny Paypal donations button on the bottom of his website to cover his expenses, he says he hasn't made any efforts to profit from it, despite being contacted several times by people who sniffed money to be made. ... So far, he's turned them all down. 'There was one person a while ago who seemed pretty promising,' he says. His tone is gently bemused, as if not quite believing that people actually want to pay money for his work. 'I've had ten offers over the past four years from people who say they want to add advertising inside it or attach some additional software to the installer. But the way they wanted to implement it technically would have put my users at risk of them being malicious, so I couldn't do that.'" It would be nice if every piece of software and every website with ads thought the same way.

8 of 64 comments (clear)

  1. SIGINT? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Is there a SIGINT option?

  2. Re:Stop it already by oodaloop · · Score: 5, Funny

    Are you listening slashdot editors? No more articles on this multi-billion dollar technology corporation since this one guy isn't interested!

    --
    Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
  3. Re:inevitably... by realityimpaired · · Score: 4, Informative

    features break every time facebook updates their interface, but they're usually fixed in short order. I've been using it for years, and it does make the experience less annoying.

  4. F.B. Purity by crow · · Score: 3, Informative

    I've been using FB Purity (http://www.fbpurity.com/) which is pretty much the same idea. My favorite feature is to hide stories that match a list of regular expressions. That's a great way to stop hearing about a particular TV show or sports league that several friends like to go on about.

    1. Re:F.B. Purity by MattKruse · · Score: 5, Informative

      I had that feature longer before FB Purity. He may have been inspired by my implementation ;)

  5. Re:Facebook Is for oAuth by wiredlogic · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Doing that just legitimizes the practice of sites requiring sign-in from an external social media account. At the very least use OpenID wherever possible.

    --
    I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
  6. Rare Find by Neuronwelder · · Score: 3

    I find his character admirable. He is person who can't be simply bought off or influenced. He is the rare find that cannot be bought off with greed. Good for him!

  7. Re:Disappointing by MattKruse · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I don't do it to benefit them, I do it to benefit the people who use the site. Although they certainly don't do many things right, I don't share your view of their evilness. Oh, and I also create other things. This just happens to be fun and challenging. I'm not trying to change the world.