More and more web pages are showing up with links to Facebook (facebook.net) and Twitter (twitter.com) and with that I find that page loading hangs up when connecting to these links; I have blocked both Facebook and Twitter from setting cookies in my browser (Firefox 8.0). The problem could be coincidental — but I doubt it, since the problem occurs whenever those connection attempts show up in Firefox's activity bar.

Is there any way of preventing Facebook and Twitter from "befouling" my browsing?

Are you asking whether you can prevent FB and Twitter links from showing up at all, or a way you can prevent them from leaving cookies?

A lot depends on how you're blocking the cookies. If you're just disallowing cookies from those domains, it *shouldn't* slow down loading. I use both Facebook and Twitter (well, in a manner of speaking; I only use Facebook to record my Twitter posts), and I can visit either site with cookies disabled.

As noted, I've already blocked them from leaving cookies on my browser (via Firefox's privacy preferences). What I'm looking for is a way to circumvent the addition of those hyperlinks to those websites — which seem to think that putting hyperlinks to FAcebook and Twitter on their own web pages (eg, newspapers, in fact every article from newspapers) is a worthwhile endeavor. If that is at all possible, I'd like to know how to go about it (for the reasons given earlier).

I don't know that you can block Web links on other sites. You can put Facebook and Twitter into your Hosts file so that you'll get an error if you click on them, but as far as I know you can't stop them from appearing on other sites.

I was afraid that would be the case. {sigh}

If Pogue provides guidance for installing Safari Extensions, you might consider taking a look at Shellfish.