Item — HN Reader

_A plea to the moderators:_ Please change the title of the submission back to match the title of the blog post, "Never Use Google to Sign-In".

To be fair to Google I have clearly called out all third-parties in the blog post, some by name.

I used Google's name in the title because that name elicits reaction from almost 100% of the audience, since almost everyone has used Google services at some point. I myself am a happy user of Google services, except for one incident [1] a few years ago when I was locked out of my account for 20 days. I was able to recover it because I finally remembered my linked yahoo email's password; I had forgotten that, and never bothered to save it in password manager, because I hadn't used it for many years.

For the record, I was also blocked out of GitLab for 7 days [2] for no apparent reason. This was resolved after a few days of follow-up with their support folks. Upon account recovery, the reason given was that my account was accidentally caught by their spam filters.

Back on topic: Changing the title from "Google" to "Third Party Auth" significantly softens the impact and urgency I want the reader to feel upon reading the title, and the short article that follows.

[1]: https://support.google.com/mail/forum/AAAAK7un8RUAzmxJAkP8gU...

[2]: https://forum.gitlab.com/t/gitlab-com-account-blocked-need-h...

- OP

6 comments

Dissenting.

OP, your first sentence is If a website offers you to sign-in using Google (or any third-party service, say Facebook, Github, etc.), don’t use that feature.

Titling this as "Third Party Auth" is a reasonable and correct summary of your article. Blaming Google specifically is hype-mongering unless you have a specific gripe against Google - and reading through your post, I don't see a Google-specific criticism.

I think the title would be better if it included Facebook because those are the two most prominent and recognizable to the average person.

The title for the HN audience is better, but probably equally misleading since 3rd party auth could include Auth0 or Okta, and personally, if you buy into Apple’s privacy story they should be trusted.

I.e. you want this article to be clickbait and now you are unhappy that it is not.

Way to speak for another person's intentions AND feelings! That's where we are nowadays, I guess.

It's their article, I think it's fair they ask for the name of the post to be preserved. It has nothing to do with their intent (clickbait or not) that the audience here voted up their submission.

> I used Google's name in the title because that name elicits reaction from almost 100% of the audience,

And

>Changing the title from "Google" to "Third Party Auth" significantly softens the impact and urgency I want the reader to feel upon reading the title,

It sounds rather like parent was correct in calling it click bait. For me, any article that has aspirations to manipulating ones emotions in order to illicit a particular outcome is definitely selling some propagandist notion... Aka click bait.

That the article's content, HN submission and the parent comment is the same person @gurjeet, I would like to thank @dang for the modification.

But that's not what clickbait is. Clickbait is a title that quickly imposes the feeling of missing and important information. Especially to get people to click through so the link target can serve ads. That's clearly not OPs goal as he makes the title a call to action, omitting no critical information.

Propaganda has nothing to do with the definition of clickbait, so saying "[propaganda ...] Aka click bait." Is very misleading. And betrays your argument that everything should be exclusively logic, specifically omitting any appeal to emotion. That's exactly what you're trying to do by portraying op as using propaganda. And rhetorically speaking would be a disservice to both reader and article.

No, clickbait would be: This guy used Google to login, you'll never guess what happens next!!

He wants to us the name Google to personalize the message assuming that's what a lot of people use. Do you know how I figured that out? That's what OP said was his goal. It's rude to assert otherwise without evidence.

“I opted out of a Yubi key, forgot my Yahoo password, didn’t have the authenticator set up, couldn’t text message myself, and wasted 3 days fixing it” could maybe fit as a title too.

I want the title to reflect what prompted this article in the first place. Just as others are calling out, I noticed those Google login boxes on unrelated websites. I want the reader to also make that connection and then read the article to understand what’s at stake.

All titles are clickbait, researchers, bloggers, youtuber, conference speakers, and journalists who succeed are also ones who know how to choose good titles

Not all titles are clickbait, and even if the majority are, we should strive for better

Clickbait is a spectrum not a binary. I think keeping google in the title doesn't detract from conveying what the article is about while at the same time making it more attractive.

Definition of clickbait [1] (emphasis mine): something (such as a headline) designed to make readers want to click on a hyperlink especially when the link leads to content of dubious value or interest.

The title of the article matches the content, so, no, it wasn't a clickbait. Also, if the title was really a clickbait, someone would have surely called it out before my gripe about the title change. In fact, 2 others complained about the title change before I posted my top-level comment; those others' complaints and my responses are now buried under the "More" link at the end of this page.

I understand you, @baby, have good intentions, but I take offense to @bzb6's remarks. I guess that's what I get for responding to a recently created account (41 days ago) with no posts and all of whose comments are one-liners; mostly knee-jerk reactions, no insights, and not considering the nuances of the real-world implications.

[1]: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/clickbait

Ok, we've regoogled it above.

Edit: now that I've had a chance to read the article, I don't agree with that change, and have restored the title back to how a moderator had correctly edited it before.

The reason is that the article doesn't say anything specific to Google. The sole point it does make is common to all the services, and indeed the article seems "conscious" of this, since 3 times it says "google" it immediately qualifies that with a phrase like "or any service".

Nor does the parent comment make the case that this is specific to Google; in fact it makes the opposite case.

A famous youtuber lost access to his TikTok account when Facebook banned him because he was using Facebook login.

https://youtu.be/oJcEDzgPRrc?t=57 (warning, the video is somewhat off-color)

Thanks for sharing this! I didn't find anything off-color in that; maybe it's my level of acceptance.

The reader will still see your title when they visit the house page.

Oh wow, now the title has been changed again! Here are the different versions the title went through:

  Never Use Google to Sign-In
  Never Use Third Party Auth to Sign In
  Don't use third party auth to sign in

I guess a another moderator had a better idea at what title will attract more attention.

Given the number of comments, the duration at the top of HN, it's clear that this post (including the title) hit a nerve with many people. But the moderators in their wisdom chose to reduce its reach by watering down the title; twice! Compare the 3 versions of the title so far, which one do you think resonates with most people? If they had chosen to add other prominent offenders' names (Facebook, Github, etc.) I wouldn't have minded a bit; that would have been a better use of the space the title takes up.

But they chose to first generalize it from "Google" to "Third Party Auth" (casual reader: eh, what's a third party auth; who are these people? what's auth? is it authentication, or is it authorization; I guess that's too generic post so I don't care, <keep scrolling>), and then replaced "Never" with "Don't" and lower-cased the rest of it. I don't expect the general population of HN to take my, or anyone else's, advice at face value, but think about the problem in their own context, how much it affects them, how much they care about the problem, and if they agree with the proposed solution, and to what extent.

I'm sure that by watering down the title's efficacy, the moderators have lost opportunity to educate many of the HN readers.

People write content to share their ideas, and they want people to pay attention, because the writer thinks it's important. If the moderators' changes help in that goal, no writer would mind. But in this case I am sure these changes have hurt the chances of spreading the core concern.

I find it offensive that my judgement in choosing the title is being questioned, even though most of others agree that the original title was appropriate, in general. Thankfully, I went with my gut to write the article on my own Blog (and link it here) even though it was 3 short paragraphs, rather than post the original content here. The original title and content will stand there, without fear of someone else's ability to alter it.

Someone else's platform, their rules, their whims; no recourse, as with other platforms.

To self: Shut-up and get on with you life, you have already wasted inordinate amount of time on this.