Think this is a great question of how black to white is the sharewall, particularly if search engines decide to factor in social in the future.?

Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.

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  Micah Fisher-Kirshner: Think this is a great question of how black to white is the sharewall, particularly if search engines decide to factor in social in the future.
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  Rob Wagner: Interesting article. I don't like them and when I come across one I just move on. ;
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  Masatake Wasa: I'm with +Rob Wagner. ;I don't like them and unless it is very reputable site, I leave the site than being forced to endorse it. I'm not going to endorse something that I cannot judge, and I'm too lazy to undo that endorsement. Essentially, endorsement should come after the reader had the opportunity to assess the site, rather than the other way around.
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  Masatake Wasa: If social becomes a ranking factor, then it must be problematic. The visitor is forced to "pay" for the content by the site owner in the form of social endorsement, and the payment the site owner receives is aiming at influencing the rankings. Substitute social endorsement with a link in a blog post: would it not be problematic, if a site owner for example only grants access to the site's contents after the potential visitor creates a link to the site in his or her blog post?
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  Micah Fisher-Kirshner: I side with Clayburn in the article, more about how it's implemented matters than whether it's black/white. That said, all the examples I've seen have been blackhat to me.