50

Can I hide any of the sharing buttons? I don't use LinkedIn or Facebook to share questions, but I occasionally use Twitter.

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10
  • 15
    I'd like to see a pref to just hide them all away, including the disturbing "Know someone who can answer?" phrase at bottom of an unanswered question.
    – user138231
    Sep 6, 2011 at 23:28
  • 1
    @Chichiray: Why does that disturb you?
    – Andrew Grimm
    Sep 6, 2011 at 23:31
  • 41
    I'm not social. And I like clean UI.
    – user138231
    Sep 6, 2011 at 23:36
  • Sadly, the "original trilogy" doesn't have Twitter integration, but the Stack Exchange 2.0 sites do.
    – Chris Frederick
    Sep 6, 2011 at 23:43
  • @Chris: is that still the case?
    – Andrew Grimm
    Sep 6, 2011 at 23:44
  • @Andrew: Huh, you're right. I'm seeing the links but it doesn't appear to be documented as a recent feature change?
    – Chris Frederick
    Sep 6, 2011 at 23:46
  • @Chris Jeff likely turned it on after last week's podcast, where this particular feature not being enabled on Stack Overflow was discussed.
    – Tim Stone
    Sep 7, 2011 at 0:13
  • 1
    Well shame on me for not listening to the podcast. :)
    – Chris Frederick
    Sep 7, 2011 at 0:20
  • 1
    Those social buttons and the banner add way too much visual noise. I hide them with chrome adblock, but I'd rather an official option to disable them.
    – wim
    Sep 8, 2011 at 0:51
  • Not to mention that the mere presence of the FB share button allows Facebook to track your web activity. If you don't have a FB account it creates "shadow" IDs instead. Random User Agent plug-ins provide some protection but will not remove the cookies.
    – SDsolar
    Apr 20, 2018 at 17:43

6 Answers 6

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19

It's as far not possible without Greasemonkey, Stylish or like. You could then hide them with some CSS rules:

a.fb-share, a.twitter-share, a.linkedin-share { display: none; }

I would however opt for a global pref to hide them altogether.

enter image description here

Update (almost 1 year later)

They have finally been removed from the UI! They are now only available behind the "share" link.

enter image description here

\o/

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4
  • If they don't make it configurable without Greasemonkey, then they're making it more likely to Greasemonkey it, which'd be a bit of an unintended outcome.
    – Andrew Grimm
    Sep 6, 2011 at 23:42
  • 2
    It also works in a plain usercss stylesheet if you add the !important thingy.
    – mario
    Sep 7, 2011 at 7:43
  • AdBlock works well too.
    – Ambo100
    Aug 15, 2012 at 14:43
  • Adblock claims to be able to do if you add the "fanboy" filter list
    – SDsolar
    Apr 20, 2018 at 17:45
11

This adds a tremendous amount of visual clutter to the interface, thus distracting from the question itself. I propose that the sharing interface should be added as a drop-down when hovering over a share button. Here's a quick mockup (complete with hand-drawn button):

enter image description here

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11

Install AdBlock Plus for Chrome or Firefox and add a couple of rules:

stackoverflow.com##.fb-share
stackoverflow.com##.twitter-share
stackoverflow.com##.linkedin-share
stackoverflow.com##.gp-share
stackoverflow.com##.bottom-notice
stackoverflow.com##.share-answer
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3
  • Works nicely, although it won't be a permanent solution (as stuff gets changed around on the site).
    – slugster
    Sep 7, 2011 at 0:41
  • 2
    AdBlock has a "create easy filter" button where you highlight crap you dont want to see anymore so if they add more annoying stuff it will be easy to remove. And it works with Chrome sync so its saved across your different computers.
    – bkaid
    Sep 7, 2011 at 0:42
  • 2
    Or a more compact rule: stackoverflow.com##[class$="-share"],.share-answer. Note that "bottom-notice" is unrelated to the sharing stuff, some people might want to keep it.
    – Wladimir Palant
    Sep 7, 2011 at 14:52
3

If you don't want to use extensions, Firefox also allows you to put a userContent.css file into the chrome/ subdirectory of your profile. It should have the following contents:

@-moz-document domain(stackoverflow.com) {
  .fb-share,
  .twitter-share,
  .linkedin-share,
  .share-answer {
    display: none;
  }
}

Note that changes to userContent.css only become effective after a browser restart. If you don't like this, Stylish or Adblock Plus are the way to go as other people noted already.

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3

Not officially but a couple a weeks ago I created a Google Chrome extension called undercurrent.

undercurrent

Its latest version (1.0.7) contains an option to hide the sharing buttons. You can download the extension from undercurrent website.

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0

This doesn't answer your question directly, but these sharing buttons were supposedly added after SE Podcast #16. As Chichiray said, though, there's currently no option for disabling them.

Question with Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn share buttons

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3
  • I understood that he was well aware about this and that his question was more about the possibility to just hide the Facebook and Linkedin buttons by configuration (is it?).
    – user138231
    Sep 7, 2011 at 0:04
  • @Chichiray: Yes. Bathwater, baby, getting rid of.
    – Andrew Grimm
    Sep 7, 2011 at 0:06
  • @Chris: Yes. And thanks for fixing "occasionally"!
    – Andrew Grimm
    Sep 7, 2011 at 0:23

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