Disqus

I am thinking of disabling Disqus on SST.  Many commenters here find them difficult to deal with and lately they have stopped posting approved comments on some basis that is obscure.  Disabling the service will cause some loss of posted comments, but it may be worth it.  Opinions?  pl

Comments

[David Solomon]

Hello Colonel, I am certainly with you. I have found Disqus to be more than a little annoying and I wonder what their security is really like. Please disable Disqus.

Regards,

David

[Turcopolier]

I decided to dump disqus. They are as much a left wing social experiment intent on build "communities" across the word s anything else. As TTG mentioned comments have been disappearing from the blog on what appear to be an arbitrary judgment that threads should be shorter. There will be some disruption as a I return to the old way f doing things. pl

[Adrestia]

I prefer the old comments.

1. I used "Recent comments" a lot to view active discussions. With Disquss these are not visible.
2. Disquss is often very slow or unresponsive.
3. No Disquss account required. The old comment system probably makes it easier for trolls and other unwanted posters (eg adverts) to post. This probably generates a lot of moderating work. Maybe some of this could be delegated to others? I don't know if that's possible with typepad.

[Godfree Roberts]

Good. Commenters who confront the official narrative are routinely blocked by Disqus across their entire platform of 75,000 websites.

No explanation offered, of course.

[W Patrck Lang]

I left DIA in 1994. I was not there.

[Morongobill]

Disqus certainly seems to have a sjw component, appreciate you removing it.

[David Habakkuk]

Am I alone in being unable to see any of the comments on recent posts? The very interesting discussions of the 'True Pundit' piece and Larry's account of how he was sat on when he sought to expose the GCHQ role in the coup attempt seem to have vanished into ether.

[Barbara Ann]

Disqus never swallowed any of my SST posts, to my knowledge, but censorship was always a risk with using a third party platform. Whatever works for the ringmaster, I just hope the trolls don't return with the ability to post anonymously again.

I am slightly alarmed that all existing comments seem to have disappeared, do you plan on importing these? When the move to Disqus was mooted I recall seeing that TypePad can import a whole blog (e.g. from Wordpress) but I can't find anything on importing comments only. I know you can export Disqus comments in XML format (see link) so I hope some way can be found to import them back into SST in the old (new) comment format, for posterity.

https://help.disqus.com/import-export-and-syncing/importing-exporting

[John Michael Ennis]

I don't mind at all your decision to leave. I am becoming increasingly suspicious of all the intermediaries trying to insert themselves into the discussion process here in the land o' Internet. It seems that each come with a pre-sharpened axe to grind and using them increasingly limits discussion.

[W Patrck Lang]

I don't know how to do that and it is probably not worth spending my energy on it.

[W Patrck Lang]

A price you pay for dumping disqus. Sorry

[Eric Newhill]

Ah. I see. When I read this early this morning before having my coffee I misunderstood what was being said; what the issue was.

Yes, Disqus is another social media Borg tool. It gathers info on all of us to be analyzed by God only know who and it does censor.

Sadly, the comments for all of the recent posts are now gone (or not visible). Like Mr. Habbakkuk says, it is a shame to lose responses from people like LJ.

[Barbara Ann]

I am happy to set up my own trial TypePad account & see if I can figure out how to import Disqus comments into this format. If I am successful I'll be in touch directly Colonel, to save clogging up this thread.

[Jackrabbit]

Excellent choice!

I know that there are several people at MoA that expressed dissatisfaction with Discus commenting, including Bernard (aka "b"), so you may see more engagement at SST.

[ex-PFC Chuck]

I agree with your decision to dump Disqus. The fact that David Habakkuk has been unable to even see comments on recent posts is a huge red flag.

[Matt]

yaay.. disqus is gone!

I see ditching Disqus as a kickback against the digital Stasi.

[Per/Norway]

Sounds like a good idea tbh.

[johnf]

I've had difficulty getting it to use my usual name johnf for several months now so have not been posting here. Instead it insists on posting my real name.

[Stumpy]

Yes they track you across other platforms and block you globally.

Nothing is neutral.

[rjj]

optimizing the ratio of goose shit to golden eggs is one of life's ongoing/recurrent challenges.

[rjj]

P.S. this [metaphor for Disqus] does not work.

https://i.etsystatic.com/13309198/r/il/8ad4a5/1655541485/il_794xN.1655541485_d0vx.jpg

[Barbara Ann]

So after some investigation TypePad docs say: "Before disabling Disqus commenting, please consider that comments submitted through Disqus can not be transferred back to your Typepad blog". This is indeed Disqus' price of admittance, leave your data behind at the door..

[PavewayIV]

Zeta Global bought Disqus a little over a year ago. Zeta's roots are back in managing massive (paper) junk mail advertising campaigns and fine-tuning recipient lists for clients. That's morphed into data fusion and AI analytics to consolidate internet user identities across any applications - supposedly for marketing purposes. Google and Facebook (among many others) do the same thing.

Zeta grab data from all over: emails, Twitter, Facebook, IP addresses and anything else (public sources) they can get. They went on a buying spree to gobble up existing data sources to help profile you - Disqus was only one of dozens of internet outfits they acquired. Then put all that data together to figure out who you really are everywhere online and in person. Then they sell this 'marketing data' to corporations... or governments, if you're a conspiracy nut like me.

Disqus was pretty small when acquired - maybe 50 or so employees. Zeta typically fires a lot of staff after their acquisitions and transfers their jobs to India. Disqus was also gutted after it's acquisition. Zeta just wanted its user database - it has no real interest in throwing money at Disqus to make it better. It's just another data vacuum for them.

Disqus will never let search engines index the comments it collects, so it's a good way to hide 'uncomfortable' information its clients would prefer nobody can find or see. Say, like on consumer review sites Disqus manages. The comments you see are linked from Disqus' servers, that's why it slows down sites. The only thing a search engine can see is the article itself and a link to the Disqus comments.

If this all sounds really creepy, well... it is. Zeta, like the Stasi, needs to know everything about everyone. Your identity 'profile' is the product. But they assure everyone that your privacy is safe with them - they just sell the metadata.

[r whitman]

Good decision to abandon disquis. I have been on their s*list for years. I expect to be an occasional commenter again

[Ingolf Eide]

Hallelujah, Colonel. I never much liked Disqus. Quite apart from everything else, the inability to easily view the most recent comments was a constant annoyance.