As far as I understand, both of these like buttons would violate the WMF privacy policy, in that they track users. Share buttons (which are just buttons that trigger links), are possible, but these Javascript generated counters that exchange profile information cannot be used.

bugs wrote:

For the "share buttons" that Derk-Jan suggests, you might want to consider installing the English Wikinews' social bookmarking templates instead: http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Template:Social_bookmarks

Bryan.TongMinh wrote:

Closing WONTFIX, because of the privacy issues with the extension.

Reopening, Someone should actually ask general counsel and get their view on these shareboxes first before closing this.

Bryan.TongMinh wrote:

You don't need to be a lawyer to know that sharing IP adresses with sites outside Wikimedia is a gross privacy violation.

Any tool that is added to pages for all users and 'pings' back, which these tools do, is sharing of personal information (namely, what you are reading on Wikipedia) and is not allowed per the privacy policy, unless the user makes a conscious decision to share this information.

http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Privacy_policy

Ergo, if the user specifically approves using of the like/share buttons (like enabling a gadget in his preferences for instance) or a confirmation dialog, it is just fine, but it being enabled by default for all users is not allowed per the current policy.

I don't see why we would need counsel to interpret that. The issue has been raised multiple times in the past, and has always been interpreted like this.

Share links == good (see for instance http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Template:Social_bookmarks or Share this in [[:en:Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2011-02-28/News_and_notes]] )
userscript/gadget with share/like scripts == good (see for instance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:TheDJ/Sharebox)

Scripted share/likes in every page without conscious user decision == bad

Changing all WONTFIX high priority bugs to lowest priority (no mail should be generated since I turned it off for this.)

david.parreno wrote:

If this extension "is a gross privacy violation"... why this tool (http://stats.grok.se/ca/201103/Francisco_de_Goya_y_Lucientes) it's allowed?

Bryan.TongMinh wrote:

(In reply to comment #8)

If this extension "is a gross privacy violation"... why this tool
(http://stats.grok.se/ca/201103/Francisco_de_Goya_y_Lucientes) it's allowed?

Because it does not share the IP addresses of visitors with non WMF sites. The stats are collected at the WMF side.

re-closing. The two things are totally different from a privacy perspective. (And its not just the IP addresses being sent to facebook/twitter that are scary in that extension).