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posted by n1 on Friday January 27 2017, @06:06AM   Printer-friendly
from the price-of-free-speech dept.

The Disqus website commenting system is no longer free, (as in beer).

When it comes to managing comments on a website, the free options include WordPress (and other native comment systems), Facebook comments, and [until recently] Livefyre (now owned by Adobe).

You also used to be able to use Disqus for free, but that changed this past week when the company started telling websites that use Disqus that they had to either sign up for the paid service or turn on the Disqus ads.

[...] Disqus offered clear benefits over the default WordPress comment system, including support for threaded comments, upvotes, spam detection (which clearly doesn't always work), comment moderation tools.

At the time Disqus was also completely free for most publishers. Over the years Disqus has rolled out a few different monetization options. Larger publishers can pay for premium features, and all sites can opt-in to Disqus ads, which can appear above or in the middle of the comments sections.

Starting later this week, all publishers using Disqus will have to either enable ads or pay for a subscription.

I honestly don't know which would be worse: advertisements, or websites currently using Disqus switching to Facebook comments.

Also at Liliputing.


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  • (Score: 2) by q.kontinuum on Friday January 27 2017, @06:34AM

    by q.kontinuum (532) on Friday January 27 2017, @06:34AM (#459343) Journal

    Depends on the perspective. De-facto, I think Facebook-accounts are more prevalent, and probably more people would join the discussions. For average-joe it might even be nice to show to more people what he is interested in, to meet and identify more friends in discussions, etc. And maybe it even lifts the barrier for trolls. Once having a separate account for troll^wdiscussing, it comes easy, but being forced to use their public Facebook-identity might discourage some people.

    Although, having to sign up to participate can be an advantage to exclude those not really interested, avoiding some of the clutter. And, some of those not having a Facebook account are imo more likely to have made an informed decision, therefore being people with ideals. (No, that does *not* mean that Facebook users don't have ideals. Many of them made informed decisions on other topics. But others just follow herd-instinct, and those are not very likely to provide new impulses to discussions.)

    Personally, I do have a Facebook account. I only use it in a separate Browser-installation on PC in a private window (to complicate browser-fingerprinting), never from any smartphone, tablet or the like, in order to find long-lost friends and to keep in touch with some people who use it as primary contact point. I'm unlikely to participate in any discussion requiring a Facebook login.

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  • (Score: 1) by shanen on Friday January 27 2017, @09:15AM

    by shanen (6084) on Friday January 27 2017, @09:15AM (#459388) Journal

    Actually, I think it is the bad (as in immoral) financial model of Facebook that makes it such an enormous waste of time and the terrible financial model of Disqus that has forced it to this change while also preventing Disqus from improving. I think the kernel idea of Disqus was sort of good, but the implementation has actually gone downhill over time.

    In particular, I was disappointed when they seemed to create some internal discussion forums for possible improvement to Disqus, only to start vigorously censoring those discussions. Sometimes the censorship was so odd it made me wonder if they were trying to sabotage their own hopes.

    I always want to end on a constructive note, but for now I'll just say that I think there are people who do value good discussions and I think there are no financial models that align their interests with any of the discussion systems that I've seen. I've been looking for good suggestions to support, and not been able to find them, and even gone farther in offering my own suggestions with a bit of my own money behind them. Given that we [the computing communities I was involved in] had deeper and more thoughtful discussions many years ago, it's almost as though the Internet is evolving to prevent thoughtful dialog, eh?

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    • (Score: 4, Interesting) by q.kontinuum on Friday January 27 2017, @09:50AM

      by q.kontinuum (532) on Friday January 27 2017, @09:50AM (#459399) Journal

      It's not only the Internet. Humans are far less enlightened and complex as they give themselves credit for. Smartphones are so shiny, the coloured clicky games stimulate the nucleus accumbens [wikipedia.org] so easily, why bother with real thinking? Why read, exchange arguments? You can just define your own alternate facts [theguardian.com].

      Those who really want to think can join Diaspora, usenet, and other forums. But it tends to get lonely there :-(

      And now, ge'roff me lawn

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      • (Score: 1) by shanen on Friday January 27 2017, @11:18AM

        by shanen (6084) on Friday January 27 2017, @11:18AM (#459413) Journal

        Read The Shallows yet? strongly recommend it for support of that thesis. That's why I want the deep-thinking cap to make it easier for me to shut out the distractions.

        --
        #1 Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice{5} ≠ (Beer^4 | Speech) and your negative mods prove you are a narrow prick.
        • (Score: 2) by q.kontinuum on Friday January 27 2017, @11:32AM

          by q.kontinuum (532) on Friday January 27 2017, @11:32AM (#459416) Journal

          I didn't, just checked the summary on Amazon. Looks interesting, maybe I give it a go. Thanks.

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      • (Score: 2) by Unixnut on Friday January 27 2017, @02:59PM

        by Unixnut (5779) on Friday January 27 2017, @02:59PM (#459482)

        > can join Diaspora

        Is Diaspora still a thing? I remember them saying they were shutting down years ago. Would be nice to know if I was misinformed. Additionally If it is any good then might even be worth looking into setting up my own.

        • (Score: 2) by q.kontinuum on Friday January 27 2017, @04:20PM

          by q.kontinuum (532) on Friday January 27 2017, @04:20PM (#459531) Journal

          I have an account and still see updates on my timeline... (Don't want to link here, because it is clear-name and I don't want to get it linked to my pseudonym here)

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        • (Score: 2) by q.kontinuum on Friday January 27 2017, @04:59PM

          by q.kontinuum (532) on Friday January 27 2017, @04:59PM (#459552) Journal

          I just checked the wiki page [wikipedia.org]. The software is still further developed [github.com]
          Actually I'm considering setting up my own pod. My main current account is hosted somewhere else, and works fine, and on my first attempt I had some problems setting up my own server (I sincerely hate ruby. I had to deal with so much version chaos of test scripts, different set of gems, different incompatible ruby versions, rvm killing basic operating system features in extremely creative ways, etc. that I really, sincerely have an aversion against this language.), but I noticed that there are several docker-files and -images available nowadays, so it shouldn't be hard anymore to set something up.

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    • (Score: 5, Insightful) by TheRaven on Friday January 27 2017, @10:21AM

      by TheRaven (270) on Friday January 27 2017, @10:21AM (#459406) Journal
      Having Disqus comments is the same as having no comments for me. Ghostery blocks them, because they track your web browsing habits across multiple sites (it blocks Facebook for the same reason). Hopefully this will lead to sites running their own comment systems.
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      • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 27 2017, @06:31PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 27 2017, @06:31PM (#459615)

        maybe switch to disconnect instead of ghostery. disconnect is open source. ghostery is made by advertisers and is closed.

        • (Score: 3, Informative) by Pino P on Friday January 27 2017, @06:41PM

          by Pino P (4721) on Friday January 27 2017, @06:41PM (#459622) Journal

          In fact, equivalent functionality to the Disconnect extension is built into every Mozilla Firefox browser. Go to about:config and turn on privacy.trackingprotection.enabled.

      • (Score: 2) by edIII on Friday January 27 2017, @09:29PM

        by edIII (791) on Friday January 27 2017, @09:29PM (#459717)

        Ditto :)

        My knowledge of Disqus is exactly limited to that Ghostery block image that says 'Disqus is blocked'.

        There is only one place on the Internet I comment on anything, and that is right here. Well, technical mailing lists are excluded since my real name is there along with an actual phone number to reach me. That's business. Personal wise, Soylent is it.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 27 2017, @12:21PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 27 2017, @12:21PM (#459422)

    Basically the problem with that is that excludes people who are facebook-incompatible and as that policy becomes more and more widespread it gives mark z quite a bit of extra power over what he would have if his website was just another website among others.

    ie. it's like old microsoft all over again except it's "free". Don't want to use word, much less pay for it, but somehow people keep sending word documents anyway.

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Friday January 27 2017, @03:49PM

    by Grishnakh (2831) on Friday January 27 2017, @03:49PM (#459505)

    Like you, I won't part participate in any discussion requiring a Facebook login. Nor will I participate in any discussion, outside of purely technical ones, requiring my real name.
    IMO, comment systems which require a real name are actually going to make things worse: quality comments will be rare, and bad comments from trolls and idiots will be common. I see it today with the quality of Facebook-tied comments.

    IMO, people like me who are well-paid professionals will tend to not use such systems, because it can only hurt us in applying for jobs. A simple Google search will immediately show a prospective employer your personal opinions about irrelevant things, your political views, etc. Now notice that there's no shortage of people happy to spout this stuff under their real name out there, and in quite vitriolic ways. But what kind of jobs do you think these people have? Generally not very good ones. Some guy who works a minimum wage job doesn't have to worry much about his online comments becoming an issue with his career. Highly-paid professionals do.

    So while I'll be happy to attach my real name to a technical discussion in my field of expertise (in a forum dedicated solely to that), on a discussion forum that gets into more controversial stuff, it's either pseudonym or anonymous or I don't bother.

    • (Score: 2) by q.kontinuum on Friday January 27 2017, @04:51PM

      by q.kontinuum (532) on Friday January 27 2017, @04:51PM (#459547) Journal

      Now notice that there's no shortage of people happy to spout this stuff under their real name out there, and in quite vitriolic ways. But what kind of jobs do you think these people have?

      POTUS, e.g. ;-)

      I see your point, but that counter-example just sprang to mind...

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      • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday January 27 2017, @05:00PM

        by Grishnakh (2831) on Friday January 27 2017, @05:00PM (#459553)

        That's a very good point. I'll counter that posting vitriol under your real name can work out well in some cases, it just depends a lot on your career. If you're a professional seeking to be hired by a decently-run company, it's not likely to help you, only hurt. If you're some type of celebrity of public figure, and your vitriol and postings actually appeal to the people who will help you in your quest for power or money, then it can be a huge help. That's what we just saw with this election. However, there are exceptions: if you're a professional and you want to work at a company where you're sure the company/hiring managers have the same political views as you and would actually appreciate your postings, then it might help. But to me, this seems like a big gamble. It's very easy to turn people off with political talk, esp. in today's highly polarized climate.

        • (Score: 2) by urza9814 on Friday January 27 2017, @08:20PM

          by urza9814 (3954) on Friday January 27 2017, @08:20PM (#459694) Journal

          I intentionally refuse to censor or conceal my online identities for the sake of employers. The kinds of employers that would even look at a candidate's Facebook, let alone use it as a basis for hiring decisions, are the kind of petty tyrants that I wouldn't want to work for anyway. If they refuse to hire me because of something I posted online, I'd consider that to be dodging a bullet.