
Disqus bait and switch, now with ads - stakent
http://jacquesmattheij.com/disqus-bait-and-switch-now-with-ads
======
bpatrianakos
I have to disagree even as someone relying on Disqus in a few different ways.

First off, they did provide notice. I received an email about this at all the
addresses I have an account under. Maybe the the author didn't and that sucks
but this seems like an edge case and he is one of the exceptions, not the
rule.

Second, you can turn this feature off which brings me to my next point. Even
if they do decide to change this can you really blame them? The thing is we're
all using the service for free and on top of it they're willing to share
revenue with users. I mean we can't just expect every free service to never
monetize. Could they have done it differently? Sure but lets not give in to
the temptation to be armchair CEOs here and proclaim that we know that a
different model would have worked better for everyone. I give Disqus the
benefit of the doubt that they did their homework and decided that this is the
best way for them to monetize and still do right by their users.

I use Disqus on my personal blog and I use it as part of an app I'm quite
passionate about. In my app (link is in my profile) I use Disqus in much the
same way Tumblr does where you enter your short name and your public pages can
have comments. As someone using them in these two different ways I empathize
with the author especially when it comes to my app as I don't want the ads
associated with anything I'm personally doing but at the same time I'm not
blaming Disqus either. I use them, in both cases, as an alternative to rolling
my own. Their platform is far richer than anything I could do so even if they
didn't allow opting out its still a win for me.

In the end this outrage is unnecessary. Disqus made no secret of this, reached
out to us, provided a way to opt out, and even offered to share revenue! On
top of that they're still a totally free service that's offering us value. The
author himself says his blog will no longer have comments because of this.
Why? I'm sure he can create a commenting system himself but obviously Disqus
is delivering value in a way that's pretty tough to replace.

Come on guys, its one thing to not like these ads but to not use Disqus in
protest really isn't hurting Disqus as much as it is the person who stops
using them in most cases. They definitely acted in good faith on this one and
we need to stop acting like every free service on the web owes us the service
we want, how we want it, when we want it. This isn't a charity we're talking
about here, its a web startup. I follow jaquesm's blog and I agree with most
of his thoughts but I can't get behind this one.

~~~
jacquesm
How would you feel if twitter decided to include (for your benefit, of course)
a bunch of advertising next to their button after sending you an email about
it and defaulting to 'on'. Would that be ok for you or would you feel that
that was not what you signed up for when you decided to embed their button
tag?

I signed up for a 'comment tag', not for an 'advertising tag'. There is a
world of a difference between those two, it changes my blog from a non-
commercial one into a commercial one and that is - to me at least - a major
shift. On top of that they make it look as if _I_ endorse these links.

To see that happen without my explicit consent is something that is enough to
turn me off from that particular service provider because I can apparently not
trust them with the responsibility of not altering our relationship in a
material way relative to the terms of service of the moment when I signed up
for their service.

~~~
camus
you can stop using their service if you dont like it.

I dont understand this sense of entitlement regarding free services.

And it is not like disqus did not warn its users , they did. Dont like it ?
use something else.

> To see that happen without my explicit consent is something that is enough
> to turn me off from that particular service provider because I can
> apparently not trust them with the responsibility of not altering our
> relationship in a material way relative to the terms of service of the
> moment when I signed up for their service.

then stop using that service , what's the big deal ? did you pay for it ? no.
So there is no binding contract between them and you.

~~~
jacquesm
> you can stop using their service if you dont like it.

I just did.

> I dont understand this sense of entitlement regarding free services.

This free service just made it look as if I endorse a bunch of companies and
decided to change my site from non-commercial to commercial. That's _my_
prerogative.

> And it is not like disqus did not warn its users , they did. Dont like it ?
> use something else.

They may have warned, I definitely did not receive it, they changed the terms
of service post the part where I signed up and defaulted me to behaviour under
the _new_ terms of service. That is 'bait-and-switch'.

> then stop using that service , what's the big deal ? did you pay for it ?
> no. So there is no binding contract between them and you.

Actually, their terms of service bind me _and_ them, sure they can change the
terms but those are not the terms that I agreed to when I signed up and I
don't go around checking the terms of service every 3 days to see if someone
is up to something sneaky.

Whether I paid for it or not is not material.

~~~
res0nat0r
Currently in their TOS under 'Advertisements':

 _You agree that Disqus may include advertisements and/or content provided by
Disqus and/or a third party (collectively “Ads”) as part of the implementation
of the Service._

Now I don't know if this language was there before the change you are speaking
of, but if it wasn't I'm sure included in their TOS was that you agree to them
being able to amend their TOS at any time to include something like this.

~~~
jacquesm
Let's just say that I find an opt-out change of a comment engine to an
advertising tag that states that I recommend certain products and services
using stealthy advertising a non negotiable move, no matter what your terms of
service say.

~~~
pifflesnort
Perhaps you should have thought of this _before_ using a completely free
"SaaS" offering?

Perhaps you'll think of this next time.

~~~
Zak
You seem to be focused on what Disqus has the right to do, while jacquesm is
talking about user expectations and the consequences of violating them.

I'm inclined to agree with him that displaying ads on the user's site without
explicit opt-in is a major faux pas with the potential to destroy a company's
reputation permanently.

~~~
pifflesnort
I don't think what Disqus did was in good taste, but I do think that it's
foolish to expect otherwise from a free SaaS provider.

------
shortformblog
They've been doing this for months, and it's done revenue-sharing style, so if
you're getting a lot of comments, you stand a chance of making a couple of
bucks through the ads. (If you go to your admin page and click Analytics,
you'll see the discovery tab which tells you how much you've made.)

I've gotten multiple emails on it, so it certainly wasn't a bait and switch. A
piece from November on the matter:

\--

The new Promoted Discovery for Disqus was a major release for publishers like
you who are seeking ways to drive business around content, community and
conversation. We’re very excited about the results so far. There’s strong
engagement in discovered content and excellent flow of new high quality
traffic for websites using Disqus. This tells us it’s winning for both
publishers and their readers.

We’re only getting started. As we grow, we'll continue to evaluate new
opportunities for you to grow and make money with us. We think you’ll like
them because, like Promoted Discovery, they will be complementary to the user
experience. If you’d rather not try out these features, you can always turn
them off in your settings.

The next feature we’re piloting lets you get credit for the traffic you drive
to ecommerce sites like Amazon or eBay. If you already do some form of
affiliate linking, we do nothing to those existing links. Soon, you may begin
to see the impact of these in your reporting dashboard (we’ll be rolling this
out slowly over time). Of course, all of this happens seamlessly behind the
scenes — the experience for your readers doesn’t change at all. You can learn
more by reading this page.

At Disqus, our core philosophy is to remain native to the core user experience
and provide the best community experience possible. As always, I welcome your
questions and feedback.

~~~
jacquesm
I have not received an email, there is no opt-out switch, and honestly I have
not seen this on the comment section of my blog until it showed up just now.
Elsewhere in this thread there are people that say they don't have it right
now so it appears to switch on/off according to some hidden criterion.

Highly annoying.

"At Disqus, our core philosophy is to remain native to the core user
experience and provide the best community experience possible."

I hate language like that.

And I'm 100% sure that I have never seen these ads before.

~~~
shortformblog
Whatever the case, you can turn it off:

[http://help.disqus.com/customer/portal/articles/666278#disco...](http://help.disqus.com/customer/portal/articles/666278#discovery-
settings)

~~~
jacquesm
It should have defaulted to 'off'. You can break trust exactly once.

~~~
danso
Just out of curiosity, but what exactly did you think the arrangement between
you and Disqus was? Their service obviously saves bloggers a lot of hassle,
and it can't be free to maintain?

I don't mean to say that this justifies this perceived wrong, but it certainly
justifies, from their standpoint, to think: "If you're going to use our
service, for free, you should at least read our emails (and not filter them to
the Spam folder)". Also on their side: they've allowed the ability to opt out.

So you can still drop the service on the grounds of principle, and
technically, this is a "bait and switch"...but it's a pretty mild one.

~~~
jacquesm
Whatever it was that I thought I signed up for, I explicitly did not sign up
for an advertising tag, especially not a stealthy one, and on top of that not
one that looks like an active endorsement on my part.

~~~
FooBarWidget
You agreed to their terms and conditions upon sign up. It says:

"We may, without prior notice, change the Service;"

~~~
jacquesm
And my terms of service read 'and if you change your terms of service in a way
that I don't like I will disable your plug-in and I'll bitch about it'.

~~~
patrickaljord
That doesn't make any sense. You agreed to their terms of service and now
you're complaining because it doesn't match your ideals. Disqus is a great
service provided for free, what did you expect?

~~~
jacquesm
I did not expect to see myself recommending products and services that I would
not ever think of recommending to others and I would not expect to see my site
change from non-commercial to commercial and I did not expect to see ads
masquerading as regular content.

Terms of service are a fig leaf, how you act is what matters and these actions
are not acceptable, especially not for an opt-out that wasn't there when I
signed up.

~~~
patrickaljord
In what way are they not acceptable? They are totally acceptable to me. They
provide a great service for free and now they want to monetize it with ads,
shocking! I think it's extremely generous and quite remarkable of them to
offer both a cut and an option to opt-out. They should be rewarded for that,
not blamed. I think the sense of entitlement you have knowing that disqus
offered you a great and free service for years and now a way to opt-out or
even make money is really disgraceful.

~~~
chc
If I offer to paint your house for free, and I do a good job of it but also
steal your TV, you actually are entitled to be upset and even call the cops.
You can't say, "Hey, I was working for free, and now I want to monetize it
with his TV. He's acting so entitled, like I need to ask if it's OK first."

(Obviously I'm not saying they stole anyone's TV, but more extreme examples
demonstrate the flaws in an idea better than more subtle ones. The principle
of "It's free, so I can do whatever I want and you're being an entitled brat
if you object" is simply fallacious.)

Long story short: Working for free does not give you free reign to violate
people's trust. Something that isn't OK doesn't suddenly become OK just
because you were working for free. If you acted under-handedly, don't be
surprised when they call you under-handed on their blog. Being free doesn't
immunize you from accusations of under-handedness. It does limit their
recourse, but they still have every right to be unhappy.

~~~
mayanksinghal
That's a poor analogy and even you have pointed it out. So using it only
creates an unnecessary and invalid connection between stealing and what disqus
did.

To be fair, "I can do whatever I want" was actually the condition GP pointed
out. As other users have pointed out, this was not a surprise to most of them
as they were notified about it.

> they still have every right to be unhappy

Yes They do. But they don't have the right to call the other party malicious.

~~~
chc
> _That's a poor analogy and even you have pointed it out._

No, I pointed out why it's a perfectly fine analogy ("more extreme examples
demonstrate the flaws in an idea better than more subtle ones").

When drawing an analogy, the things need only be similar in the areas being
compared. In fact, the more dissimilar they are in other respects, the better,
because the whole point of an analogy is to show how similar features behave
in different contexts.

For example, if you put forward the proposition, "OJ Simpson is violent
because he is black," I might respond by pointing to other well-known black
men such as Martin Luther King, who was clearly not violent and is pretty well
known as a good person. This does not mean I'm equating OJ Simpson and Martin
Luther King in any respect other than their race — in fact, the differences
between the men are at the heart of the comparison. They are similar in the
aspect being compared (race), but otherwise unlike each other in nearly every
way possible.

If any dissimilarity invalidated an analogy in the way you seem to believe,
analogy would be altogether impossible because things could only ever be
compared to themselves.

> _So using it only creates an unnecessary and invalid connection between
> stealing and what disqus did._

No, it doesn't! I posted a fairly long parenthetical specifically explaining
this. _Please_ take the time to read and think about what you've read before
replying in the future. It is very annoying to have to explain this over and
over.

Again, the difference between the two actions is at the heart of the analogy.
_Obviously_ you'll agree that the painter who steals the TV is in the wrong.
Nobody thinks it's OK to steal your customer's stuff. The point is that the
same justification — he offered a free service, so he is entitled to monetize
it in ways that affect you without telling you and you have no right to
complain — would appear to apply to the painter's actions. Thus, it is a weak
justification. That was my point.

> _Yes They do. But they don't have the right to call the other party
> malicious._

ctrl-F malic -> 0 results

Uh, cool?

I don't think anybody is calling Disqus _malicious_. Malice is intent to
injure someone, and there's no evidence that Disqus was actively seeking to
hurt people. I think the accusation here is that the way Disqus has behaved is
inconsiderate and sneaky.

~~~
mayanksinghal
> more extreme examples demonstrate the flaws

You are calling out for slippery slope, if X is acceptable than 1000X must
also be. And since 1000X is not, therefore X shouldn't be.

> analogy would be altogether impossible because things could only ever be
> compared to themselves.

To be honest, I rarely trust analogies as logical statements. They are good
for introduction to a concept but they have an inherent bias towards the view
of the constructor which may not be visible to the other side in an debate.

The argument you put forward was that 'I do it for free so I can do anything'
is fallacious. Yes, it is. Firstly the argument here is 'You agree that I do
this for free, the definition of 'this' may change with time and it is
entirely my right to do so' is the actual condition.

> It is very annoying to have to explain this over and over

I am sorry I annoyed you, that was not my intent. I did read it but may be I
can't read as well as I hoped I did.

> ctrl-F malic -> 0 results. Uh, cool?

While I am at least a little offended by the snark I would assume that it was
my mistake that I annoyed you a lot. English is not really my first language
so probably my choice of word 'malicious' was out of place, but you are taking
things too literally. _Disqus has behaved is inconsiderate and sneaky_ \- I am
trying to point out that they notified their users and were not trying to hide
anything about this.

Honestly, I see no point continuing to annoy you. So I will shut up.

------
danielha
Hi Jacques, I’m Daniel from Disqus. Hopefully I can clear some stuff up.

As others in this thread have pointed out, we haven’t really been shy about
what we’re doing here. You can see a progress update of how things are going
on blog.disqus.com (it’s the second post down as I write this).

We’ve put a lot of effort into being communicative around what we’re doing
with discovery and advertising (we call it Promoted Discovery). I don’t think
“bait and switch” is accurate in describing how we approached this. It was
about a year ago that we started talking publicly about the idea of a revenue-
share ad product within Disqus.

As our ideas matured, we started sharing those details with our userbase. This
was about 6 months ago. As with many of the things we do, Promoted Discovery
was rolled out gradually so that we could learn and get better. Along the way,
we blogged, sent out emails, and surveyed users. We’ve done half a year of
messaging and we’re still not done with the full roll-out. It sucks that our
messaging didn’t reach you, but you should know that you can configure how
everything works, or opt out completely, on disqus.com/admin/settings. When
new users sign up, they also are introduced to what Promoted Discovery is and
have the choice to configure it.

As always, we’re learning through feedback. Especially with the product. Are
we finished with the advertising product? Not yet — the product has plenty of
room to grow and get a lot better. But it’s performing well for many
publishers and they’re happy with the revenue that’s coming in. We care about
that because our core discussion product is going to get even better because
of it.

~~~
MatthewPhillips
Hi Daniel, why was it not opt-in? You describe it as a "revenue sharing"
program, but did not ask your customers if they wanted to be part of it. You
assumed their silence meant that they did.

~~~
kamjam
Because that's how most options that are likely to make money are rolled out
these days. Disqus are not the only one using these tactics.

I can't find the link the anti-patterns video/site, I'm sure someone will know
the one I am talking about. But it's things like pre-selecting paid for
delivery options, adding travel insurance to flight cost etc etc to drive up
costs but then make it not obvious how to remove those items... kind of
reminds me of those tactics.

Most of the things rolled out in Facebook I found out through HN or other
friends posting. It's not always obvious (though in this case it looks like
everyone else got he email except the OP)

~~~
ville
> I can't find the link the anti-patterns video/site, I'm sure someone will
> know the one I am talking about.

This one? <http://darkpatterns.org/library/bait_and_switch/>

~~~
kamjam
Yeah, pretty much. One I saw was a webcast but discussing the same thing. It's
pretty well publicized now.. at least in the HN community :) Thanks.

------
jrs235
"If you aren't paying for the product/service then you are the product/service
being sold."

EDIT: Wow. Why the downvotes?

Do people still not understand this saying? I understand it hurts if/when you
get burned but it shouldn't come as a surprise when free services change to
something less desirable to monetize their business models. I wouldn't be
surprised if they soon offer paid "premium" accounts that don't show ads.

~~~
rscale
That quote is often wrong.

For example, there are "freemium" business models where the users are
segmented by usage level, or by need of additional features. In those models,
the "free" users aren't being sold, they're just potential customers and
advocates.

Further, this sort of breach of trust isn't limited to free services. There
are paid services that start selling advertisements as well.

~~~
omni
You can still be the product if you're on the free end of a freemium model.
LinkedIn is an example.

~~~
drusenko
You can also _not_ be the product as a free user (like on Weebly). The above
quote implies that as a free user, you are always the product, and that's just
not true.

~~~
jrs235
Honest question, how is a free user not sold by Weebly?

It appears they have a for pay designer platform. It also appears they are
funded... are they done raising rounds and/or not considering going public?
The reason I ask, is because every free user is being sold then. Their
usage/stat of adoption is being sold to investors and others in order to
increase their value/price. I imagine someday, Weebly will find a way to place
ads/marketing material in front of those free users (even if its just in
periodic emails to those users).

EDIT: I could be wrong about them eventually placing ads in front of the
users... but I imagine it and expect it to happen someday. If not, cheers!

~~~
drusenko
I started Weebly. I plan to never place ads in front of free users.

As a company we are profitable and have been for over 4 years. We do plan on
going public some day. But I find it a bit of a stretch to say that as a free
user we are "selling you" as adoption statistics. As a free user, you are
getting a lot of value, you pay nothing in return and you have no negative
side-effects either (advertising, data gathering, etc)

The reality for us is that free users tend to be really happy with the service
we are providing them for free. And they tend tell their friends about us. And
some of their friends eventually pay us money for our Pro service
(~$3-7/month).

Does that mean you are being sold? Absolutely not. You don't have to tell a
friend. As a matter of fact, you don't have to do anything nice for us at all,
and we'll still provide something of value to you for free.

But if you are pleasantly surprised at how easy it was, and you end up telling
a friend on your own, that's great! And it justifies the cost of the free
users of our service from a business point of view.

------
ChuckMcM
I completely agree with Jacques that they should have been up front with him
about the change, shortformblog suggests that they were with them, so perhaps
the blog provider wasn't passing along the email? What ever, its annoying I'm
sure to wake up and find you've gone commercial!

As a web site that gets quite a bit of traffic (blekko.com) It is interesting
to see both sides of this conversation. As the 'ops' guy I'm always getting
cold called/emailed from salespeople for services that will "drive traffic to
your web site" and the business model is all very similar. Apparently it works
well for these 'service providers.'

To illustrate, lets make up a company, we'll call it "megatraffic" or MT for
short. They call me up and they say, "Chuck we can drive millions of page
views your way, which you can monetize with this ad-provider network. We'll
share revenue 50/50, how cool is that?"

Their other guy calls me up and says "Hey Chuck, we make your site visible to
millions, for just a small price per click, we'll put a link to your site on
the {hundreds/thousands/millions} of sites in our network."

So MT here sells both ends of the pie, they "become" a sort of ad network by
charging folks who contribute links to the customer site. And then they also
get 50% of the revenue when someone follows that link and then clicks on an ad
at the landing page. That's a pretty sweet deal for them, kind of a lame deal
for the patsy who is paying and paying. It is like affiliate marketing where
you don't realize right away that you are an affiliate.

Then we read about (and I block from our search engine) on a daily basis
organized groups of miscreants who then write code to click through these
networks to shake loose the pennies and nickels and quarters that the revenue
generates. Given Google's publicly reported ad revenue its easy to see how
clever people can create multi-million dollar revenue streams with just a bit
of programming, maybe a botnet or two, and a complicit traffic aggregator.

All that money just laying there. First you pick up a few pennies, then a
couple of bucks, next thing you know you're working to squeeze every click you
can off the page like HuffPo.

~~~
jacquesm
The preferred way in which I think plug-in services should work is that they
leave older accounts in the state they were when they signed up under some set
of terms-of-service and from the moment of changing the TOS can default new
sign-ups to have the newer settings enabled.

~~~
ChuckMcM
I agree that would be a great way to structure the updates from the
perspective of the blog service provider.

------
ig1
On first looks I'd say this is probably in violation of advertising
regulations.

In both Europe and the US there is a requirement for any advertisements to be
clearly marked as advertisements and separated from other content.

For the US see FTC 16 CFR Part 255 (Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements
and Testimonials in Advertising):

<http://ftc.gov/os/2009/10/091005revisedendorsementguides.pdf>

For the UK the ASA CAP rules:

[http://www.asa.org.uk/Rulings/Adjudications/Display-
Code.asp...](http://www.asa.org.uk/Rulings/Adjudications/Display-
Code.aspx?CodeId={94A142F4-6CFD-44BC-80A6-2B01624492F5}&ItemId={747AEFC3-F2CE-4A69-B97C-110310A2E924})

------
k3n
I have an aversion to hosting 3rd-party functionality on my sites for this
very reason.

They do not work for you, they do not answer to you, and their motives are
usually quite different than yours.

Thus, don't be surprised when they act to satisfy those motives in ways that
you may not entirely agree with.

~~~
runevault
To me it depends. Something like Disquis where they were giving it away for
free I agree. However if it is a for-pay service where you are exchanging
money for service, they have some incentive to do right by you, so that your
money does not go elsewhere.

~~~
k3n
Good point, but keep in mind that if they're a business, then the ultimate
goal is to make money. It's kind of like the formula prescribed in Fight Club
which refers to whether or not a car manufacturer will issue a recall: the
decision will most often be based on which result will net greatest economic
yield. If the profits from doing X are more than the expected losses (say, due
to customer attrition), then that's a good "business decision".

~~~
runevault
That's the risk with any SaaS/PaaS/etc, not just ones going onto your site.
Anytime you pay someone a monthly fee to offer you a service, there is a risk
they will change things and force you to reconsider using that service, which
will then lead to having to change whatever you doing to warrant said service.

Guess it boils down to trust and if you don't, buy something you keep locally
and control.

------
eksith
Whether it's comments, posts, email, OS, government etc... _what you don't
control, you don't own_. Period.

I enjoy reading comments (despite their negative vibe lately) since there are
still some nuggets of gold amid the asinine BS. The deluge of rubbish is
really from unmoderated places (news blogs are particularly notorious), but if
an admin keeps on top of these, comments are a beautiful thing. Another blog
losing comments is a damn shame. It's just one more nail in the coffin for
interraction away from the shadow of walled gardens.

I think this was already mentioned elsewhere on HN, but Stallman was right.

------
danso
So this has been going on earlier than December, at least as early as October,
according to this Disqus blog post (which says they started it in August):

[http://blog.disqus.com/post/32684337804/expanding-
promoted-d...](http://blog.disqus.com/post/32684337804/expanding-promoted-
discovery)

So how sure is the OP that he didn't just miss the emails/announcements about
it? That said, yes, those links are kind of annoying (especially when
unstyled) and can clash with the content.

As much as I want to switch my blog to Octopress, at least I can have a
commenting system through Wordpress.

~~~
azundo
Based on your link above it appears that you can turn off the "discovery box"
in the Disqus settings and have "just comments" if you wish.

~~~
jacquesm
Right, until they change things again and you get a new 'feature' for your
benefit which you auto opt-in to.

That's the kind of behavior that turned me off from having a facebook account.
That you need to review their terms of service all the time to see what they
are up to now.

------
mnicole
Thank you for reminding me to check if I could finally delete my account - I
can and I did. It was impossible to delete accounts due to an "issue" in their
system for the last 3 or 4 months and was only fixed within the couple few
weeks. I only realized it because I found posts that I'd made anonymously
years prior were showing up when I Googled my name. I was horrified. These
posts were just one-off comments that served no benefit to being associated
with my primary account, but the idea that this was happening to people hoping
to stay anonymous in more serious situations was still eye-opening.

I assume that comments left without being logged into a Disqus account (but
while passively logged into a Gmail account) were automatically associated
with your email and indexed by Google under your real name without any
verification on your end. Disqus thinks that this is some sort of beneficial
feature rather than a potential breach of privacy, and has you go through and
remove these posts after-the-fact. There was no way to disassociate the
comments from my account than to delete them, so while I didn't actually want
to remove the comments from the contexts they were in, I had no choice.

Today it tells you that there are "guest comments" that are associated with
your email address, and asks if you'd like to merge them, but doesn't show you
what they are nor is there an option to delete them before merging. I don't
want to merge comments into my account that I can't even see first, and I'd
much rather delete my account entirely than risk having them continue to be
associated with my namesake.

These things, in addition to these suggested ads which are disguised as posts
also written or endorsed by the author and in my experience totally unrelated
if not straight-up offensive (saw a recommended link on a serious blog
promoting an article on some famous floozy's nip slip) have completely put me
off to using Disqus and commenting on sites that utilize it. Whether or not
they are deliberately trying to be shady or if their UX just sucks, it isn't
worth it to me.

------
bane
The real problem is the tech world's lack of an ability/strategy to come up
with a sustainable revenue generating business model before hooking (crack-
like) millions of users to their service.

Users get used to these free world-class services and when the companies
inevitably have to come up with a way to stop flushing investor money down the
toilet, users bristle at this.

The bigger problem is this, in a world of free services, how is a service with
a sustainable business model supposed to compete? As a user I'd rather use
them, but they simply can't exist in this kind of artificially created
economic ecosystem (steel dumping comes to mind).

I'd say "buyer beware" but we're not exactly the buyer here are we?

------
boundlessdreamz
I never got an email as well. Also looking at settings they have also started
modifying your links to add affiliate ids.
[http://help.disqus.com/customer/portal/articles/851667-affil...](http://help.disqus.com/customer/portal/articles/851667-affiliate-
guide)

Both these were turned on by default. Terrible move. I understand that they
have to monetize but turning these on by default is not cool.

------
traeblain
I don't know why you keep calling this stealthy or a bait and switch, I've
received emails on this. Also at one point, Disqus was showing me that I was
not using the latest "theme/style" and that I should upgrade. And in doing so,
it would enable features such as recommended and related content.

Everything I did last year fulfills the requirements of 'opt-in'. I could have
left the old style and never received the new features.

Based on my experience with this exact feature, I think the OP mis-read/didn't
read the information provided by Disqus.

~~~
jacquesm
They are stealthy because of how they are not labelled as ads.

------
natasham25
I didn't notice this happening on my blog either until a friend notified me.
When I looked at my blog post, the ad space was just filled with my own blog
posts, so I thought it was cool, since users will be referred to other
articles I wrote. However, for everyone else, those slots were ads and links
to blog posts outside my blog. I disabled the feature right away. I have my
own ways of making money without Disqus helping out incognito, thank you very
much.

My problem is not that they have this feature, and I don't really care whether
they sent out an email or not. My problem is that it was opt-out, not opt-in,
from the start, and they tried to deceive bloggers further by making sure we
don't see the ads when we look at our own pages. I chose disqus over facebook
comments b/c I can see facebook pulling something like this, but it's
definitely disappointing to see from disqus.

~~~
jacquesm
> My problem is that it was opt-out, not opt-in, from the start, and they
> tried to deceive bloggers further by making sure we don't see the ads when
> we look at our own pages.

If true that is a lot nastier than it seemed so far.

~~~
BYK
And that is of course not true, probably just a coincidence.

------
daa
I think Disqus is a great service, and I suspect that this business model will
work fine for them, but it's obviously not ideal for everyone.

The economics of hosting comments are interesting -- there is real engineering
effort in doing it well; there is product value to some degree of aggregation
(spam & bot detection, etc.); the operating expenses are real especially at a
Disqus-style scale, but it's not clear that many people would pay even a small
subscription fee.

Makes me wonder about the viability of either a federated (not fully p2p, but
"local" aggregators), either with or without actual coordination between
members of the federation on spammers, e.g.. I'd probably swallow the cost of
hosting comments for a few thousand "neighborly" sites, if it meant i had a
good commenting system with no commercial interruptions, and be happy to
subsidize "good people".

------
glfomfn
They are obviously not a charity company and its totally understandable the
need to make revenue. However, when i sign up for a service and i am asked to
link to an external JavaScript file, i expect that file to do as advertised, i
can understand the functionality changing a bit without me being notified but
not when they do such drastic changes, in that case they should either go with
an 'opt-in' option or disable there commenting system until i approve that i
am okay with this new functionality. For all those that say 'you can stop
using them if you don't like what they do', of course you can but there
'malicious' code still rendered on my webpages right? As an example, what if
tomorrow they added 'functionality' to there widget and they started forcing
pop ups, would that be okay? There is a certain level of trust needed towards
a company that wants me to link some external code on my website that they can
change at any given time, actions like that destroy said trust.

Here is the thing, if they done it the proper way i am sure most people
wouldn't opt-in, if you are running a website that makes a revenue from ads,
you probably already have all the ads your webpage can 'support', if you are
running a website as a hobby you probably aren't interested to make any sort
of revenue so you would rather not have the ads. Its way more profitable for
them to just force there way in, specially if they see that there users don't
care.

------
condiment
Disqus is in the unenviable position of having a freemium product that
everyone wants but nobody is willing to pay for. Their freemium model provides
commenting services with the expectation that value-added features or the need
for an SLA would compel site owners to upgrade to paid plans in order to use
those features. Problem is, customers that are large and important enough to
require an SLA are _also_ large and important enough to be able to afford a
custom solution.

This leaves them with the options of transitioning the business model to
something that people are willing to pay for, or finding ways to _extract_
value from their free customers.

I know of one other commenting widget provider who got into this exact same
morass, but they have opted to leverage the communities that their customers
have created to engage in "influencer marketing", where the site owner
cooperates with the commenting widget provider to have an above-board
"sponsored conversation" with a third party company.

Since it's unlikely that Disqus will be able to successfully integrate
advertisements into commenting feeds in a way that doesn't damage their
relationships with site owners, an approach like this shifts the value-
extraction machinery away from a site's commenters, who Disqus technically has
no claim on, and provides an avenue for mutual profit with the site owners,
who have an existing relationship with Disqus.

------
sudonim
@jacquesm I felt the same way and got mad at disqus when I saw they did that
without my consent. I turned off the "feature" and started looking for
alternatives.

Vanilla Forums looked like it provides a neat option to serve the same purpose
(embedded comments hosted elsewhere)

[http://vanillaforums.com/tour/turn-drive-by-blog-
commenters-...](http://vanillaforums.com/tour/turn-drive-by-blog-commenters-
into-engaged-community-members)

I didn't end up setting it up and have just had the disqus nonsense turned
off.

~~~
sheraz
I came here to say the same thing. It seems to have the same functionality
except your users have to signup either on your site or through some oauth I
believe.

------
jacquesm
Interesting. I was wondering what is going on with the flagging of this
article, it is much lower in the ranking than you'd expect looking at the age
and the accrued points. It took me a while to find that disqus is a YC
company, so that's why there are so many flags.

------
callahad
116 comments and not one mention of the substrings "ethic" or "moral".

Yes, Disqus is free. Yes, their ToS permit this. But their actions are
ethically dubious. I wish we, as a community focused on building startups,
held ourselves and our peers to a higher moral standard.

------
raphinou
This is why I never even thought about using disqus. No comments anymore in
the blog, and old comments lost? Not good...

~~~
roryokane
The old comments aren’t completely lost. If jacquesm wanted to, he could
export the comments to XML
([http://help.disqus.com/customer/portal/articles/472149-comme...](http://help.disqus.com/customer/portal/articles/472149-comments-
export)) and then write a custom script to re-import them into a new
commenting system of his choice. But unless he does that, then yes, the old
comments are basically lost.

~~~
riffraff
I think this should be highlighted: disqus is, at least, until now, quite
upfront about telling you that the data is yours and you can take it away, if
you don't want to use them anymore.

------
mmuro
It's not a bait and switch - that's hyperbole at its finest. It's just
something you don't like that you weren't notified about but still _optional_.

------
j_s
Somehow Ghostery saw this coming a long time ago... it seems like anything
running across multiple sites turns to advertising for revenue eventually!

------
Pezmc
Does anyone have a link to a site that's currently showing these adverts? I
can't find any with ad's showing

~~~
mikeocool
Not sure if this is the same thing the OP is talking about, but there is a
'Recommended Content' section with a bunch of ad-type links at the bottom of
each post's comments on <http://avc.com>

~~~
nolok
That's it.

------
snowwrestler
This happened last year to one of the sites I manage which uses Disqus. I did
not receive notice either, it just happened. And after I turned it off, it got
turned on again in December.

Like Jacques I found this incredibly annoying. But unlike Jacques, I decided
that the annoyance was outweighed by the convenience that Disqus gives me. We
went with Disqus because it was a good UI and easy to implement--that has not
changed. I just have placeholder now to check that setting every month or so.

------
bcoates
This might have negative consequences for people running personal websites:

"Bloggers -- You Might Have Already Had Libel Insurance, but you might have
lost it by having ads or a tipjar.":

<http://www.volokh.com/posts/1185312054.shtml>

Lots of homeowner's and renter's insurance policies cover libel lawsuits, but
many of them would exclude a website that makes or attempts to make even a
trivial amount of money, such as by Disqus' ads or affiliate links.

------
AJ007
If those are ads, per FTC rules they need to be marked as ads. "Recommended
Content" does not = ads, if anything it equals a false endorsement, which is
mislabeling, something worse than an omission by some respects.

Some one decided "Whats this?" is all they needed. That might be more passable
if it was hosted on a site which they own, but its not, its being syndicated
to countless other publishers, and in effect hijacking those publisher's own
credibility.

------
lucisferre
Just checked my site and no ads so I'm not sure. Perhaps they are a/b testing
this?

~~~
jacquesm
I'm pretty sure I did not have ads until today either, it stands out quite
clearly. Maybe it only happens on 'high traffic' days or some other criterion
but this definitely blind sided me.

~~~
jrs235
Perhaps it's based on the content of the page and whether they have ads that
tie into the content?

------
tinkmasterflash
I wouldn't know, I've redirected all the disqus hostnames to 127.0.0.1

This has saved me the bandwidth otherwise wasted on ppl's idiotic quips and
now, ads.

~~~
rocky1138
A great idea. Can you paste your list here? I'd like to add it to my hosts
file.

~~~
tinkmasterflash
sure,

127.0.0.1 disqus.com

127.0.0.1 www.disqus.com

127.0.0.1 mediadcn.disqus.com

127.0.0.1 parsley.com

I also use a slightly modified hosts file from here:

<http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/>

it does a pretty good job of cutting out the crap but I had to add things to
get rid of any facebook links, disqus links, etc...

~~~
rocky1138
Thank-you.

------
sehe
I can't say I'm impressed here.

In the process of being all self righteous and morally outraged, you have
killed the comments contributed by your audience.

It strikes me as odd that I kept coming back to your blog, mainly to see
whether my comment #775739854 of ~January 23rd was still pending moderation.
That post represented considerable effort and it included remarkable data
points highly relevant to your post subject.

I noticed I wasn't really the first person to actively _bump_ his comments in
order to get noticed. Also, this was the second time I posted said comment at
that very article. Somehow, the first one got mysteriously missing, after
having been pending for moderation. So all of this leaves me wondering whether
you were just not ready to maintain your blog, including comments.

Here is the gist of the comment (I can't reproduce the version anymore, since
you ... destroyed it):

> [http://jacquesmattheij.com/when-haskell-is-not-faster-
> than-c...](http://jacquesmattheij.com/when-haskell-is-not-faster-
> than-c#comment-775739854)

===================

Hmm. I might be missing something.

But I too read that article you linked, and decided to whip up something in
C++. Here's what I wrote, largely unoptimized:
<https://gist.github.com/4590998#file-cpp-version-cpp>

To my surprise, it was ~40x faster than your C version... (tested with the
original test input replicated 2500 times). Here's the timings (makefile
included in the gist I linked)

sehe@desktop:/tmp/4590998$ time ./cpp-version < input | md5sum
33ad35318cfcdc0b675f33633b26445b - real 0m2.187s

sehe@desktop:/tmp/4590998$ time ./c-version < input | md5sum
33ad35318cfcdc0b675f33633b26445b - real 1m30.358s

(the md5sum is just there to verify that the results are identical)

===================

~~~
sehe
O hey, just found the heap profiling runs.

As you can see, the C++ version uses __much __less memory (also the C version
by the OP uses 73MB - whoa; The OCaml#3 might report 12MB, but the C++ version
clocks in at just 12KB. I'm guessing he C++ version would use the same order
of magnitude as the OCaml#3 on comparable input sets, though)

    
    
        Command:            ./c-version
        Massif arguments:   (none)
        ms_print arguments: massif.out.18434
        
            MB
        73.22^#                                                                       
             |#                                                                       
             |#                                                                       
             |#                                                                       
             |#                                                                       
             |#                                                           :           
             |#                                                           :           
             |#:::::::::::::                                              :           
             |#: :::::::::::::@::::@::::::@::                             :           
             |#: :::::::::::::@::::@::::::@:::@::::@:::@::::              :           
             |#: :::::::::::::@::::@::::::@:::@::: @:::@::::::::::@::::   :           
             |#: :::::::::::::@::::@::::::@:::@::: @:::@::::::::::@::::::@::::::      
             |#: :::::::::::::@::::@::::::@:::@::: @:::@::::::::::@::::::@::::::@:::: 
           0 +----------------------------------------------------------------------->Gi
             0                                                                   16.24
        
        --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Command:            ./cpp-version
        Massif arguments:   (none)
        ms_print arguments: massif.out.18391
        --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        
            KB
        12.15^@                                                                       
             |#:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
             |#                                                                      :
             |#                                                                      :
             |#                                                                      :
             |#                                                                      :
             |#                                                                      :
             |#                                                                      :
             |#                                                                      :
             |#                                                                      :
             |#                                                                      :
             |#                                                                      :
             |#                                                                      :
           0 +----------------------------------------------------------------------->Gi
             0                                                                   11.17

~~~
sehe
Ah well. It looks like I'm just invisible to you then. Sorry for bothering.

Good luck with the blog

------
booruguru
I don't understand why people scream bloody murder when businesses attempt to
make money off of something they give away for free.

Of course they have to run ads.

And while it's bit of a grey area to display ads as "recommended
content"...Disqus hardly invented this practice. And based on the design and
colour scheme, it's fairly obvious that the "recommended content" links are
part of the Disqus widget (and generated, provided by Disqus).

On second thought, I can imagine the average user is not savvy enough to make
see this distinction. But I honestly don't care. If you hate ads so much, open
up your wallet and pay the "true" cost of your free lunch.

------
electic
Shortcut. Shortcut. Shortcut. Shortcut. Shortcut. If you use cloud services to
shortcut your infrastructure, you are not in control. Use another provider for
your billing system, you are not in control. Same here. You are not in control
so you have no reason to complain when they try to make money. If you want to
do it right, just use some software that keeps the comments and all
infrastructure on your site. Simple. Or better yet, write your own. It is not
that hard at all.

------
newishuser
If you're not the customer you're the product. There's no longer any excuse to
think otherwise.

------
maccard
I don't know why the author is annoyed at this, it's not as if he's paying for
the service.

~~~
jacquesm
Because a change was made since I first signed up for this and that change was
defaulted to 'on'.

~~~
brianb722
If new features in any product/service aren't defaulted to 'on', no one will
ever use any of them. Normal people don't change settings. As long as you're
notified of the change (which Disqus did through email and blog posts) and
it's not a privacy concern, I think 99% of companies will and should do
exactly what they did in this situation.

------
EGF
I learned about this before and this made me explicitly modify settings for
blogs I have. I turned it on for two small projects and I would be happy to
share results in a month if anyone wants to see (unless thats against TOS)

------
justhw
Honestly, this is not an issue for me at least. I've got several disqus' and
disqus does a tremendous job in handling comments. It's a lot better than
paying $999 for VIP disqus for sites that don't even make a dime.

------
rinon
Out of curiosity, anyone have a good alternative? I'd like to investigate
alternative comment boxes for static content (even if I have to host them
elsewhere myself, eg. open source solutions).

------
ryangripp
I agree--->Bye Bye Disqus

Anyone suggest replacement SaaS comment solutions?

~~~
codingblues
don't you know you can just opt-out..

------
dholowiski
I use disqus on my blog for comments. I just checked and I'm not getting what
he's getting, and I do have one post that gets ~40 views per day. Weird.

------
spencerfry
You can turn it off here:

<http://*.disqus.com/admin/settings/?p=discovery>

------
j45
Nothing is free.

If it's free you, or the attention you provide / facilitate is the product.

------
rschmitty
Formerly free service now tries to monetize. More news at 11

------
aaronz8
You can turn the "feature" off... It's in settings.

------
scottmcleod
You can turn it off...

~~~
antr
Regardless, it should be opt-in rather than a backstab to the user's trust.
Actions speak louder than words, and this behaviour says plentiful of this
company's management.

------
cyberpanther
Just turn off the feature and stop whining.

------
lurker14
I am curious if all the "free-then-ads" defenders in this thread are (a)
purveyors of "free-then-ads" businesses defending their business. (b) young or
jaded people who really have grown accustomed to this tactic

Option (a) is Annoying, unpleasant, and bordering on astroturfing, but
understandable

Option (b) is sad.

------
fakeer
Happened at a time when I was considering Disqus as my main comment system on
my new (being built) blog. The main visual appeal of my weblog is going to
be(at least that is what I want it to be) minimal and also engaging - as in
discussion.

Looks like I need to search for alternatives now. Maybe sth similar but
installed on my servers that I can control, or some other paid option where
the main business is handling their customers' reader comments and not
advertisement. There might be some with clean and easy interface where a
commenter does not have to go through much hassle.

Having said that, Disqus being a free and non-charitable organization one
should have seen this coming.

------
patrickaljord
I flagged this article because I think Disqus is providing a great service
free of charge. They give you the possibility to turn the ads off and if you
turn them on, you actually get a cut! Sounds like a good deal to me.

The negativity and sense of entitlement in this post is very strong and
frankly unbearable to me, I hope it won't ruin the Disqus guys day. Making it
opt-in would have been a ridiculously bad financial decision as they would
have lost revenue from millions of sites already. I hope this change will help
the company be profitable and improve their product.

~~~
benatkin
Way to be unbiased.

