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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.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by AthanasiusKircher on Friday January 27 2017, @06:40AM
This doesn't surprise me, of course, and it's only going to get worse for anything providing "free content" or a "free service" online.
But it's already gotten outlandish, in my opinion. Mainstream media sites used without adblock today frequently look like what you'd encounter on the "underbelly" of the internet a decade ago -- multiple layers of ads popping up in your way, some of them clearly links to worse sites where you can't even find the content anymore... Just a barrage of ads intended to install spyware or force you to click on them and head somewhere even worse.
I remember people years ago complaining about what the web was like without adblock... And now it's so much worse. How much more ads can we take? I can't figure out how the web is even usable now for people without ad blocking... And now an increasing number of sites are putting up walls preventing adblock (which is their right, but it's just gotten so bad, what choice do people have)?
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Friday January 27 2017, @07:00AM
number of sites are putting up walls preventing adblock (which is their right,
No, it is not their right. If they are on the internet, they have an obligation to share information. If they do anything to impede that, well, the internet interprets censorship or rent-seeking as damage, and routes around it. They have no right, none.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by gidds on Friday January 27 2017, @02:06PM
I disagree with your specific point. They have the absolute right to put whatever they want on their web sites; and we have the absolute right not to visit those sites. That's the way it works.
They have no obligation; but if they don't share information, then that will have consequences on the number and type of visitors.
However, I agree with the wider issue, which is that no-one can force ads on anyone else. The best they can do is to make sites that people want to visit despite the ads.
And of course some of us have a much lower tolerance for ads than others. Mine leads me to use an ad-blocker, a script blocker, and a massive hosts file; for me ads are a waste of attention, of bandwidth, of CPU load, of screen space, and a malware risk. (They're also a perverse incentive; I want to encourage goods and services that do what I want, well, not ones that advertise widely.)
I hate ads and trackers, and avoid that sort of site. I'd be very happy to see lots of moral and commercial pressure to avoid them. But I'm not sure I'd want to see legal pressure in general: things like fraud, misrepresentation, and hacking are already covered, and I think we need some more control over personal data; but much as I hate advertising in general, I suspect an outright ban would have too many unintended side-effects.
[sig redacted]
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday January 27 2017, @03:55PM
they have an obligation to share information.
Where is that written? Sorry, no. They're paying for the hosting and creation and maintenance of their site, it's theirs and they can do what they want with it. They have no obligation to anyone for anything except to pay their bills. If you don't like it, you're free to not visit that site. That's exactly what I do for Forbes, which won't let me read without disabling my ad-blocker. (I think LA Times is doing this now too, so now I ignore them too.)
The internet does not seek rent-seeking as damage; that's a terrible misuse of an old line. If someone is pay-walling or ad-block-walling (not sure if that's the right term) their article and no one else cares enough to pirate it and post it somewhere, then you're just not going to see it without paying or disabling your ad-blocker (or using some technical means to get around the block). So far, it really isn't a problem. With Forbes blocking me, I'm saving time by not polluting my mind and wasting my time with their crap "articles". But they absolutely do have the right to block me, and I have the right to type Ctrl-W in response or just ignore links to forbes.com.
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Friday January 27 2017, @06:46PM
you're just not going to see it without paying or disabling your ad-blocker (or using some technical means to get around the block). So far, it really isn't a problem.
Until someone gives you heck here on SN for making uninformed comments due to not having read the featured article.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday January 27 2017, @07:02PM
They really do that here?
I'd just tell them to go screw themselves. AFAIC, if an article is pay-walled or ad-block-blocked, then I'm under zero obligation to read it before making all the commentary I want. If they want me to read the article, they better find an accessible source for it.
Maybe this site should simply have a policy that no pay-walled or ad-block-blocked links are allowed.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Monday January 30 2017, @03:53AM
No, it is not their right. If they are on the internet, they have an obligation to share information.
Others have already replied to this, but... Huh? Are you being sarcastic? Because we really can't tell anymore.
If they do anything to impede that, well, the internet interprets censorship or rent-seeking as damage, and routes around it. They have no right, none.
If you're actually serious here, note that there's lots of stuff on the internet that's not public. Lots of password-protected sites and other services not on the web (but still on the internet). Just because most people and businesses use the internet as some sort of public messaging board doesn't mean it can't have other uses. And if a site wants to place terms on who gets to download information from it, that is most certainly their right... particularly if they are paying for the servers, etc. Will people work to circumvent adblock or whatever? Sure. But I'd argue the more ethical choice in such a situation is to stop using that site. There are about a dozen major news sites I no longer click on because I know they've either blocked adblock users or state that they don't want people if they use adblock. So, I respect their choice -- it's their site. I may think it's a poor business choice, but they're the ones making it.
(Score: 2, Informative) by aristarchus on Monday January 30 2017, @04:44AM
As Einstein allegedly said, nothing will change because our thinking has not changed. We constantly think of the internet as a telephone system of private messaging and communication, or a broadcast medium like radio and then television was. Either you pay for a phone line, or the broadcaster has to find some way to pay for the infrastructure with advertisement or whatnot. (This is what later becomes rent-seeking behavior, with ad-free cable TV and pay-per-view.) But the internet is neither of those things. The infrastructure costs have fallen to marginal levels, at least on the individual level. Private communications may transit over the same backbone, but they are not what the system was designed for. I speak for the internet as the Creators dreamed of it: a free and open access to all of human knowledge by all humans. With that model, yes, anyone who is on the internet has an obligation to share information, because that is its purpose, and information wants to be free.
Yes, Republicans and other greedy bastards have taken it over, since the .com days. I remember when the internet was mostly .edu! So the model is there, and is in fact the original model. The fake idea of intellectual property, foisted on the tech community by the likes of Microsoft, a company that had to steal its first TCP/IP stack, is foreign to the internet, a parasite that soon will be remedied by the community that opposes commerce that restricts the free exchange of information. All these sites that complain about ad-blockers? They are violating the social trust (and government funding) on which the network is based, they are freeloaders.
No doubt some will say that this is just my opinion, but dudes and dudettes, I have been watching information systems since the time I had to write a message on papyrus, encoded if necessary, entrust it to a courier, who then had to walk or take a sailing ship to deliver the message to its intended recipient. To get information, people had to actually physically travel to places called "schools" and "bibliotech". I think I know a revolution when I see one, and advertisement is a threat to that human possibility. Advertising is what gives us alternative facts. Advertisers lie, cheat, and extort, and the sooner they are eliminated, the better off humanity will be. Just think, did you see any sponsor stickers on the side of the Star Trek Enterprise?
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by aristarchus on Thursday February 02 2017, @06:32AM
META!!!! WARNING!!!! META!!!
OK, how about we reconfigure "Redundant" to +1, since so many of our brain and otherwise damaged conservative or libertariantard members need things repeated multiple times before they can begin to understand?