The Case Against Share Buttons

Back in The New Leaf Journal’s early days, I had share buttons on my articles. I eventually removed them in part because I did not think they added anything useful to my site and in part because of a certain Pinterest incident. I had not thought about them in some time, but I nevertheless read Derek Hanson’s Nobody clicks your share buttons with interest (HT Ankur Sethi). Mr. Hanson cited to evidence that few people click share buttons because they can easily share links using native tools on their devices. Moreover, he noted what I learned back in 2020: Share buttons can add undesirable third party scripts to a site. Consider this a good read with the external resources even if you do not need to be convinced that share buttons are unnecessary. (See related discussion in The Emu Café and Blog Hospitality).

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