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Ask HN: echo "127.0.0.1 facebook.com" ›› /etc/hosts?

7 points by nerdfiles ↗ HN
Yesterday a friend asked to use my computer so that he could complete a show flyer for a band. I've also added 127.0.0.1 www.facebook.com. He asked, almost cheekily, "Did _you_ do this to your computer?" -- He not being savvy enough to realize what was going on (He could have asked if the wifi hotspot we were on blocked FB, which, of course, is a wholly different, and more terrifying idea, but hey, the wifi I'm on now blocks torrentfreak.com...)

Usually if someone asks, "May I use your laptop to browse Facebook?" I will tell them that I have to re-configure a few things first. This usually steers the conversation to some other direction.

Generally, I don't want sites which use Facebook "like" buttons or Facebook's comments API to complete those requests from my system.

Is this good practice? Socially or technically?

8 comments

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jgrahamc
I think it's reasonable. I have a number of sites (reddit.com, facebook.com and google-analytics.com) blocked in the same way in my /etc/hosts

Since I don't have Facebook account I very rarely need to unblock it for anything and it's a bit of a pain to do so it stops me wasting time on sites like reddit.

nerdfiles
Same here.

What I find most surprising is the widespread belief that one "cannot delete one's Facebook account." (( http://www.facebook.com/help/delete_account, http://www.facebook.com/help/contact.php?show_form=delete_ac... ))

This is surprising for the fact that no API of this sort sanely exists that does [EDIT: not*] allow for such a feature. I mean, to hazard a bit of hand waving and choir-preaching (perhaps): but it's shocking the rift between those who know what "CRUD" means and those who don't.

Why would anyone believe that one cannot "D" (delete) in the Facebook, given the historical trend of Web app dev practices, the organic SEO that has emerged around those practices, and the wealth of tags on the Web which contain terms like "CRUD."

It's almost unsettling...

jfaucett
I guess it depends on what people mean here by "delete". Do they mean erased as in no more data records, or no longer viewable / interfaceable from an application level. For instance, once I'm prod I almost always set a deleted flag instead of actually deleting for whatever piece of data it is in my CRUD actions. The Information is still there, and can be restored at any time, but its still "deleted" as far as my app is concerned.
Tangaroa
I've done that for a few forums and gaming sites to discourage myself from wasting time there. A lot of people used to trade lists of marketing domains for adding to their hosts files before browser plugins were created for the same purpose. It is not an uncommon practice and should not bother anybody unless they suddenly need to access one of these sites from your computer, which can be easily fixed for a short time.
[dead] taw
This doesn't usually work since their tracking API may use domain different than www.facebook.com. (like fbcdn.com or whatever)

Websites are on too many domains these days.

[dead] taw
This doesn't usually work since their tracking API may use domain different than www.facebook.com. (like fbcdn.com or whatever)

Websites are on too many domains these days.

delimiters
This is actually a great idea. I'm definitely going to start doing this.
jaseemabid
Wow! I was looking for a way to block Facebook and this is the best way I can think of :)