These buttons (Facebook Share and PinIt) are currently compulsory on every Ezoic website theme. You can find them under the main photo for every page of your site.

Even though social media is important to any business, the reason I'm requesting these buttons be optional is related to the photographs we use on our websites.

Photography in danger

Not every website uses stock photography.

In my case, I use photographs from Flickr, under their Creative Commons 2.0 license. This means that, for every photograph featured, I give the original photographer full credit on my website as well as a link back to their Flickr page. It's the decent and right thing to do.

I've also explained this explicitly to my readers in my photo policies page. I even say on that page "please do not steal these photographs".

Ezoic don't give us the choice

The problem is, by Ezoic putting those social media buttons on my site - buttons added without my permission - EVERY photograph can now be pinned or stolen.

This is not a happy situation - and Ezoic do not provide us publishers with the means to remove the buttons. Ironically, they're the ones who added the buttons to my site and now won't remove them.

If Ezoic had presented me with the option of whether to add those buttons, this would be a different story.

But they did not.

I'm now in the process of removing my site's photographs, all because of Ezoic's unrequested actions.

Give us publishers more rights

I definitely feel adding or removing these buttons should be the publishers' decision, right and choice, not Ezoic's. We have, after all, entered into a relationship with them - but those are still our websites, content and businesses. Ezoic DO NOT get to decide how we conduct any of that or interfere.

If your site is happy to have these social media buttons, then go for it! If you don't want to use them, then it should be your choice to get removed.

And there should be an option in the dashboard or on the themes where you can do this. And this is the feature I'm requesting be added to the dashboard, to help us publishers have more control over Ezoic's themes.