If you’re like me, you may have noticed on the odd occasion within a social sharing bar that the regular Facebook, Pinterest, Google Plus buttons show but the actual page like counts seem to be missing or blank in Firefox (maybe in other browsers too?).
Additionally, you may also find Google Ads don’t appear on various pages either.
Stupidly, I thought this was some social sharing widget problem or plugin within my browser causing this. After a ton of fiddling around, it dawned on me that I had my Privacy within Firefox set to “Never Remember History” – doing this prevents the page like counter from showing and as it turns out Google Adsense ads if you enable “Use Tracking Protection in Private Windows” checked. Apparently, when browsing in “Never Remember History” mode, Firefox behaves as though all windows are Private.
So, if you are finding that the Facebook individual page like counter is not showing, or ads are not showing (maybe that’s a good thing!) maybe change your browser and uncheck “Use Tracking Protection in Private Windows” or just live with them not showing 🙂
Here’s an example of a typical widget in two states:
1. With “Remember history” configured in Firefox:
2. The same widget with “Never remember history” enabled in Firefox:
I hope this helps someone trying to work out why – I feel less stupid now 😀
Thanks to Cor-el for explaining this behavior over here:
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1096738
