[mike-cardwell]

Proud to not be a part of this "we". These social buttons are a plague on the web. They take something which is beautifully decentralized, and then create a single point of failure, and allow companies to create massive databases of private information from it as well.

You can host an image locally, and create a link using it. You don't need to hand over the browser of all of your visitors to one or more AD companies by letting them execute arbitrary JavaScript on your pages.

[ceol]

I think your parent post was talking about the Facebook Like/Google+ +1 buttons. In order for those to work, I believe they need to be loaded on the page via an iframe.

Things like Facebook's "share" and Twitter's "tweet" buttons don't execute any arbitrary (i.e. not specified by the developer) JavaScript.

[umarmung]

Am I the only one who,

1. Doesn't have a Facebook account.

2. Runs NoScript to whitelist scripting and site trust.

3. Runs Cookie Whitelist to whitelist cookies.

4. Runs BetterPrivacy to wipe Flash/LSO cookies.

5. Runs Adblock Plus to prevent viewing ads wherever possible.

?

That said, at least some like Heise.de, have put in place solutions that do not add to the underlying problem.

[pork]

Um...ad networks have been doing the same thing with 1px images since the mid 90s. The social buttons are not a new concept in tracking; it's just visible to users now.