If you use AdBlock, then blocking the universal Facebook “Like” button is a simple task.
- Open AdBlock preferences.
- From Filters menu, click Add Filter.
- Paste this URL into the text field:
http://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?* - Apply Changes and click OK.
Note:
Also, If you want to block the Facebook “Connect” boxes that hundreds of websites use, enter this additional URL as a filter in AdBlock:
http://www.facebook.com/connect/connect.php?*
Results:
The Facebook website itself will continue to work just fine, but no longer will you need to put up with the extra loading and rendering times caused by the universal “Like” button or the Facebook Connect boxes.
It may also help regain some of your privacy back from Facebook, since AdBlock stops the Javascripts from ever being loaded, thereby hindering any possible attempts Facebook has made to track it’s users around the web.
From a technical standpoint, why I dislike the Facebook “Like” buttons.
As if it wasn’t already obnoxious enough to have to load half a dozen embed codes (such as YouTube, Vimeo, SoundCloud, Google Maps, Google Analytics, etc) on every single website or blog I go to, now I have to endure the Facebook “Like” button.
My dislike for Facebook has been growing ever since the CEO openly declared that he’d rather drink a warm glass of his own piss than protect your privacy, and this new universal “Like” button is not helping his cause.
A blog that I read everyday called Ajaxian adopted the Facebook “Like” button from day-one, so I got to experience the annoyances right away. I did a quick inspection using Firebug to take a peek at what was going on.
For every “Like” button on a webpage, Facebook uses an IFRAME to make a GET request to facebook.com. Note that they don’t use one of their many content distribution networks (CDN’s), but the same facebook.com we all use. The GET response is 2.6kb which calls for the loading of 5 dependents worth 18.6kb. That’s 21kb for the first button, and 2.6kb again for every button thereafter. Take into account that on the first page of Ajaxian, the “Like” button loads 16 times.
That’s 60.2kb of GET responses from facebook.com on each page load, through 21 separate requests. That many requests is killer on page load times, especially when it’s alongside the loading of other scripts and media.
I then looked at the actual HTML response for each of those IFRAMEs and I was appalled. Each IFRAME has long strings of useless META data. Each IFRAME loads two CSS files (combine them!) and one javascript file, but somehow manages to load another IFRAME inside the first and loads yet another javascript file. Then seven (7!!) script tags are scattered through the body of the frame.
I’ve noticed blogs taking significantly longer to load since they adopted the Facebook buttons, due in part to the rendering engine of my browser is probably having an aneurysm.
I used to think Facebook was a slick application, especially in comparison to MySpace. But these days I dislike Facebook more and more, and wish I had a simple, one-click-button I could press to show it.
