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Feedly Forces Its Users To Create Google+ Profiles
somegeekynick writes "Feedly users, a lot of whom migrated from the now-defunct Google Reader, are now finding out that they will not be able to login to the service without a Google+ Profile. In a blog post from Edwin Khodabakchian, which was posted almost at the same time the change rolled out, the reason for the change is stated as following Google's own move from using OAuth to Google+ for authentication. What has riled up a lot of users, as can be read in the comments, is that this change has come without warning and a lot of feeds are now being 'held hostage' by Feedly, especially for users who are reluctant to create Google+ Profiles."
We also understand that some people would prefer to have more identity choices. So we have been testing twitter, facebook and wordpress login options. We will be rolling them out over the next 7 weeks.
Apparently they are too busy looking for other ways to force you to have 3rd party accounts to realize the obvious solution and roll their own authentication system.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
More importantly, this is a non-news story since they have since rolled back those changes.
This is a sig. This is only a sig. Had this been an actual sig you would have been informed where to tune for more sigs.
From TFA:
Nothing to see here. Move along.
I'm f***ing sick of Google and their integration of Google+ into Youtube (and obviously their other, and 3rd party services). I don't like Google+. I like Youtube (less and less these days, however). I don't use GMail, or any other Google service (besides search when DuckDuckGo doesn't find me what I want). It's like they're trying to force-feed us their horrible social network via proxy (no pun intended). NO I DO NOT WANT TO POST MY YOUTUBE COMMENTS ON MY DESOLATE GOOGLE+ ACCOUNT. Just keep them separate, they were never meant to be tied together.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
Were you going for a "funny" tag with this? Are you a software developer? You know that OpenSSH isn't a program for website user authentication, right?
Feedly's login policy was what forced me to use Inoreader (www.inoreader.com), the only reader I was aware of that provided a standalone login. And boy am I happier for it. Light, fast and simple yet also feature rich. Just like the Google reader I used to know and love....
Software developer should NEVER try to roll their own authentication, just like they shouldn't try to roll their own encryption.
Security is the domain of PROFESSIONALS and EXPERTS only. Your average softdev should NEVER EVER EVER try to roll their own authentication.
It's better to use existing software written by PROFESSIONALS and EXPERTS. Like OpenSSH. That's what everybody should use for authentication.
Wow. How wrong could this be? Let me count the ways...
Nah. I have better things to do. I'll just say that a "real" developer uses tools developed by others to "roll their own" authentication. Nobody said you should to invent your own hashing algorithm or anything. Just follow recommended practices, use a known-to-be decent hash method, and be sure to salt.
It ain't rocket science.
What is the issue with creating a Google+ account?
The issue is that using "John Doe" as your name when it is not your name is in violation of their Names Policy, you are subject to having the account suspended or canceled.
This is so much bullshit on so many levels. Using a real-life and permanent name in conjunction with social networking activity is, in my opinion, extremely stupid. Making this a requirement for participation is frightening.
G+ has taken some steps in the right direction, but IMO this has been more talk and less action than is necessary and their behavior with forcing G+ membership for Google store/youtube comments is abhorant.
Preserving anonymity, pseudonyms, and online identity separate from 'real life", insofar as is possible, is essential to a healthy Internet.
AC
Has it never occurred to you that some of us DO NOT WANT to use facebook?
Well, first, you missed the bit about it being retracted.
But besides that, Feedly has nothing to gain by pumping up Google+. (Unless there is some money changing hands under the table).
Google is out of the feed reader business, so all you really need is an account at Feedly. They would like to pawn off the
authentication server stuff onto someone else. But they are just serving up news feeds. There is really no reason to
have any account details at all on hand, and they could just hand out random numbers for accounts.
The problem here is that Feedly is finding it just as hard to monetize RSS as Google did, because, quite frankly, RSS was never
intended to be monetized. It was intended to bring you to feeder's web site.
But once you have things like Feedly and before that Google Reader scraping the full stories linked to the feeds, it becomes unprofitable
for feedly, and unprofitable for the Feed sites, because nobody visits the sites anymore.
I read a couple dozen feeds. On some feeds I never visit the site. On others, I have my reader (not feedly) set up to automatically go to
the site, scrape the page via Google Mobilizer and show me just the text. No pictures, adds or any of that.
The upside, those things aren't fetched from the site, saving them bandwidth. The downside, the site makes no money from me.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
I keep seeing the seeing these paranoid critters screaming bloody murder about being forced to use Google+. What exactly is the issue with creating a Google+ account and not adding any information you do not want to share? Please enlighten me!
Has the privacy disaster that is Facebook not once entered your brain after all these years?
People are losing jobs, and failing to get jobs, because of this nonsense, people are being forced to turn over social network account passwords, and the accounts, with or without passwords are being mined, not only by advertisers, but also by government agencies.
Look, its fine that you buy into this stuff, but don't drag me into it, just because you don't see a problem in your little world. Even teenagers are starting to realize facebook is a trap.
There is simply no reason to believe Google+ is going to be any different. You can see the creeping invasion already.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
I highly recommend setting up the free tt-rss service. There's also a nice mobile client.
I simply don't trust myself to make a 100% secure server, as most should not be and are not qualified to do so. Why go through all the trouble and risk when a free alternate solution already exists?
The main, crappy replacement. The real replacement is Newsblur.
It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.
I moderate therefore I rule!
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