One of the things that drives me nuts on Facebook is that links to Washington Post articles aren’t real links — clicking on one yields not the web page in question but an invitation to install the Washington Post Social Reader app, which I want no part of.
It turns out that one doesn’t even have to install the app to make this happen. For example, I posted this link earlier today. I've never installed the app. Yet clicking on the link has the same undesired behavior (install app, not follow link).
How do I make this obnoxiousness stop, and simply post unadorned links to Washington Post articles to Facebook?
Best Answer
Eight Days of Malaise's answer seems to be the easiest solution to this, getting to the meat of the content.
Initially I would just say to block the app but, I've just realized Facebook is phasing out app profile pages which makes it more difficult to block an application. It seems that Facebook is saying it will only work before the app request or if you did not install it.
But this is not true.
From what it works for me, simply removing the application, then clicking "Recommend" seemed to do the trick, no app request was initiated.
Though when retrying a request to the WPSocialReader, if one cancels the request, the user is redirected to http://www.washingtonpost.com/ instead of Facebook home page http://facebook.com which I assumed would be the default behaviour after denying a Permissions Request (though they did state "click cancel to bypass"). Then again inspecting for a specific link
This works in your favor as you are redirected to the page when clicking cancel.
Now going back to first original share and clicking on it does seem to indicate Washington Post hijacking my links as they are indirectly letting themselves be endorsed through my links. On any subsequent request, the redirection goes straight through to Washington Times though.
The cookies are being saved here http://wpsocialreader.washingtonpost.com/ so that any subsequent request goes straight for redirection instead of the app.
Without
there is nothing you can do for your friends.
For just you, simply cancelling the app request should work as long as you don't clear the cookies for wpsocialreader.washingtonpost.com.