The Oatmeal did a pretty great describing how awful 3rd party Facebook reader apps are. (tl;dr- they lock basic URLs away from you until you agree to install an app that will passively share what you read on Facebook where your friends see it and something something domino effect. RIP you.)

This is pretty annoying and offensive (and like many of the offensive systems Facebook creates, it looks to be withering on its own). As The Oatmeal pointed out, many of us just cut + paste the headline into Google to read the story without messing with a Facebook app.

But somebody just made a Chrome extension that makes these links safe to click.

That’s right. You can just click links in Facebook without installing bad-idea apps.

It basically digs the URL out of the app mess and rewrites the page with an app-less, safe link. Is there anything more satisfying than working around elaborate systems people spent a lot of effort engineering?

Thanks open source Chrome extension makers! :D 

• Chrome extension
• Github source to make you feel comfortable
• blog post by Chrome extension author describing the whole deal