
Disqus comments adding third-party ad-tracking - heavyrain123
https://notes.ayushsharma.in/2017/09/im-killing-disqus-comments-on-my-blog-heres-why
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ploggingdev
Shameless plug : As someone who was fed up with Disqus, I decided to build my
own commenting platform (
[https://hostedcomments.com/](https://hostedcomments.com/) ) with a focus on
privacy : no ads, no tracking scripts. Having come across numerous instances
of people complaining about Disqus and some even willing to pay for an
alternative, I realized that this could potentially be turned into a SaaS. You
can see the commenting system in action here :
[https://www.ploggingdev.com/2017/08/building-a-disqus-
altern...](https://www.ploggingdev.com/2017/08/building-a-disqus-alternative-
part-1--research/)

Any feedback is welcome.

Edit : If you're interested, you can register and add comments to your
website. Currently there are no limitations on user accounts and there is no
payment processing built in to the signup flow, so no CC required.

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rambojazz
Is this open source and can be self-hosted? If not, it's just another Disqus.

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ploggingdev
It's closed source.

> it's just another Disqus.

The main difference is the privacy aspect since I don't track users or serve
ads. Disqus' business model depends on collecting user data and monetizing it,
unlike mine where I directly charge website owners to embed comments.

~~~
tombrossman
Closed source means users unable to verify your marketing claims about
tracking. Privacy conscious users like myself would prefer an open-source
commenting platform, even one with tracking, since we could verify how it
worked (and also take it a step further and circumvent tracking by examining
the source).

Also, what's to prevent a provider from double-dipping? If you can sell the
product _plus your users data_ you can presumably generate even more income.
For example, mobile phone carriers sell monthly plans to users and some sell
users location and usage data (usually "anonymised") to advertisers.

I don't mean to imply that you are doing these things, or that you ever would,
but without independent verification by a trusted third-party, all the users
have to go on are your marketing claims. What's your plan for dealing with
sceptical users?

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ploggingdev
I guess I'll have to earn trust the long, hard way :

* clear policies on how user data is handled

* explicit commitment to never sell user data to third parties

* transparency about any specific concerns users might have

* no dark patterns to trick users or website owners

* a track record of good decision making and staying true to the commitment to privacy

And for people who find me through forums (including HN) or via my blog, I
think my privacy + no bullsh*t leanings are pretty clear.

Since I'm solo and bootstrapped, I don't know what options I have regarding
independent verification of my claims, but if I get to a point where I can
explore such options, I'm all for third party verification of my claims.

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anon335dtzbvc
Could you tell why you choose to make it closed source?

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reitanqild
Not op, but here is an obvious and valid one: Because it is easier to monetize
that way.

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damnstraight
You lose virtually nothing if you just block Disqus wholesale with an ad
blocker. I'll admit it's quite nice for replying to comments on blogs, but
there's no reason that a) needs to happen in a public comment and b) that you
cannot provide an email for people to reach you at. In any case, almost all
the good conversation is in a secondary place—reddit, hacker news, social
media.

I'm far more likely to send you an email than I am to sign into an
unaffiliated third party and trust their cookies.

~~~
cbr

        there's no reason that a) needs to happen in a public
        comment and b) that you cannot provide an email for
        people to reach you at
    

I blog a decent amount, and I don't like getting emails about my posts. I'd
much rather have the discussion publicly. When we talk in the open other
people can contribute to and learn from the discussion. Putting lots of effort
in a careful back and forth conversation with a reader is much less worth it
if it's a private 1:1.

(If I wanted to talk about things where people couldn't be honest in public it
would be different)

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damnstraight
I mean this is fine, so long as you realize a lot of people prefer any other
method of communication and you're likely missing out on feedback.

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cbr
The feedback I was getting when I explicitly invited people to send me email
wasn't generally that good, plus was a lot more hassle to respond to for less
benefit. People can still find my email on my contact page, but pushing people
to comment publicly has definitely been better.

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greggman
I don't think this article is correct.

As the blog owner you opt into ads on your blog in disqus. If you don't want
the ads go check the settings in the disqus control panel and all 3rd party
requests disappear.

checking my own blogs using disqus I see no 3rd party requests at all with my
ad blocks off

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jayphen
Tracking is turned on by default, but it's pretty simple to turn it off as the
site owner. It's clearly marked in the administration section. As you said,
with ad tracking turned off there are no such requests.

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sitkack
Thanks for the reminder to install ublock origin.
[https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock#installation](https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock#installation)

~~~
jasonkostempski
I've never made it more than 30 seconds on fresh browser install without
getting several harsh reminders.

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FTA
Time and time again we see "free" companies on the internet have three Lorenz
attractors that they evolve towards: 1) users being heavily limited in
features without paying a large enough sum of subscription money to subsidize
others, 2) sell everyone's data and continue to operate, or 3) disappear.

~~~
yuhong
The tracking ad bubble is one of my favorite topics right now.

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niutech
Use Talk, part of the Coral Project by Mozilla
([http://coralproject.net/products/talk.html](http://coralproject.net/products/talk.html))
instead of Disqus. It is open source and respects your privacy.

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Hnrobert42
I only recently created a disqus account to post a comment somewhere. Thanks
for the heads up. I won't be making any more comments through their platform.
I'll also block them using NoScript.

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edent
One of the best alternatives I've found is
[https://intensedebate.com/](https://intensedebate.com/) from WordPress.

Copy a line of JavaScript onto your page and you can host comments. Commenters
can sign in with various SNS, or email. Easy to manage and filter. Email
alerts.

Only one problem - WordPress have abandoned it. It still works, but there are
no updates. So some of the icons look dated. And who knows what security holes
are present :-/

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bad_user
Any alternatives to Disqus for personal blogs?

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astrobe_
Let me be silly: go back to the nineties.

Provide your email address as an image, receive the comments in your inbox,
append the really interesting ones to your blog article.

You really want to remove the spam and will have to do some moderation in
order to keep your comments feed clean and interesting anyway. Making it a bit
more difficult for your readers to comment has the advantageous effect that
they'll think twice before writing. Moreover it also changes the way they
write, because now they are addressing to a specific person instead of talking
to everyone.

For sure it will probably drastically reduce the number of comments you get,
but which one do you prefer: quantity or quality?

~~~
CuriouslyC
Putting your email in an image is a hassle for the user. A better option is to
wrap a link in javascript that "constructs" your email from an encoded string
and sets the link's href to the appropriate mailto on hover. This is user
friendly but incredibly hard to harvest in an automated fashion.

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killerpixler
One note as to the doubleclick ad server. That's coming from Google Analytics
where your page view tags require the demographics add on (the name of which
escapes me at the moment).

GA uses the double click network to give you those age, gender, and interest
category information.

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bigbugbag
While at it, OP might also get rid of CloudFlare, Google Analytics, Google
Fonts, and the social buttons as they all track users for ad purpose (ok maybe
not cloudflare but it is still a smart move to get rid of them)

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linsomniac
A few years ago I migrated my company's dynamic site with blogs, articles and
marketing info to a static site generator (Pelikan? Nikola? I don't remember).
Part of that was moving our commetns all over to Disqus, and converting a few
small marketing functions to Javascript (showing testimonials).

Disqus was pretty cool at the time, including their presentations to Pycon and
their design. I wondered how the funding would go but was a pretty big fan.

Switching to a static site generator was the right choice, since 2-3 new blog
posts have been written since I left. ;-)

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xpil
I am using WPDiscuz:
[https://wordpress.org/plugins/wpdiscuz/](https://wordpress.org/plugins/wpdiscuz/)

The free version is good enough for casual blogging. No ads, no tracking,
visually appealing.

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shostack
Is Viglink from Disqus as well? They overwrite links to turn them into
affiliate links. Would not be surprised if this was happening in Disqus
comments.

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pvdebbe
I removed Disqus from my static blog when I realized how much it downloads
JavaScript to work.

