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>Disqus gives these marketers the ability to target users based on their interests. You can infer quite a bit about people simply based on which sites they comm
by adtac 9y ago
>Disqus gives these marketers the ability to target users based on their interests. You can infer quite a bit about people simply based on which sites they comment on, after all.
So we can expect more targeted ads in Disqus embeds from mining user patterns. The platform is a already a mess; between making 105 network requests to 20+ domains associated with tracking, malware, ad platforms, and shady fingerprinting services, and the fact that adding Disqus costs you upwards of 6 seconds [0], this announcement is making things more user-hostile.
Disclosure: I created an open-source, privacy-focused alternative called Commento [1] so my views on Disqus might be somewhat biased :)
I will also be offering it as a subscription-based service very soon as many people have asked me for one (the open source version will stay free software forever). It'll have near feature-parity with Disqus and you'll have the option to import all your Disqus comments. If you're interested in beta-testing, please let me know (email in profile). Apologies if I'm breaking HN etiquette.
[0] http://donw.io/post/github-comments/ http://donw.io/post/github-comments/
[1] https://github.com/adtac/commento https://github.com/adtac/commento
- pgt 9y agoNit: I think you mean "disclosure", not "disclaimer". I don't usually correct this, but to me the poster seems less legitimate saying disclaim when they mean to disclose a conflict of interest.
- adtac 9y agoHeh, thanks for pointing that out; much appreciated. I confuse the two words sometimes. Edited.
- patleeman 9y agoThere was this incident I documented a while back as well. https://medium.com/patrickleenyc/beware-of-disqus-17fb58cfab10 https://medium.com/patrickleenyc/beware-of-disqus-17fb58cfab...
- bberrry 9y agoThanks, just what I've been looking for
- SonicSoul 9y agodamn, i'm still using Disqus so thanks! I will give your service a try
- username223 9y ago> recent $140 million Series F funding round Series F?! Heh. It's amazing that Disqus is worth anything at all. Standard Wordpress spam filtering takes care of bots on low-traffic sites, and the friction of yet another pile of tracking junk seems high enough to dissuade people from commenting, or "engaging with your brand," or whatever it's called.
- adtac 9y agoTwo things: 1. I think you may have meant to post that as a top-level comment, not as a reply to me. 2. The Series F was for Zeta Global, not Disqus.
- username223 9y ago1. No, I meant it as a tangential reply to your comment. 2. Yes. I think it's crazy that an ad-tech firm is using its sixth round of funding to buy a worthless comment/tracking widget.
- adtac 9y agoYeah, I didn't even know there was a Series F. I thought there's Series A, B, and maybe C. That's it.
- xab9 9y agoCommento \o/ This is something really neat, thanks!
- Vinnl 9y agoGood to know that Mozilla has a similar project, although it's self-hosted: https://coralproject.net/products/talk.html https://coralproject.net/products/talk.html
- littlestymaar 9y agoNeat ! I wanted to add a comment section on my personal blog but I didn't want to use Disqus for privacy reason. I tried using Isso[1] but installing it on my server is really a PITA (I don't know the Python ecosystem, is it always such a mess ?). I was on the verge of developing my own commenting system in Rust, so I can have a stand-alone binary for ease of installation, but Go has the same property, which makes your system really attractive, thanks ! [1]: https://posativ.org/isso/ https://posativ.org/isso/ Edit: from the readme > if you're going down the self-hosting route, using Docker to run Commento is recommended. Why ? What would be the problem with distributing a binary ?
- adtac 9y agoThanks! You can find the latest amd64 binary releases here: https://github.com/adtac/commento/releases https://github.com/adtac/commento/releases About the docker part: I should edit that. I wasn't making point releases back when I wrote it and docker was the easiest way to get it running back then.
- nasredin 9y agoOT. Thanks for being pro-freedom (pro-privacy), but you are selling a privacy-respecting system and your name is "Adtac"? For privacy-conscious out there, anything with "ad" in its name screams "acceptable ads"/shady advertising corp masquerading as a privacy company.
- adtac 9y agoWell my real name starts with "ad", so I'm not sure what I can do about that :D My first name is Adhityaa, and my initial is C. So if you try saying adtac (the alphabets), you'll roughly pronounce my name with the initial. While you're here, I'd like to introduce you to our latest offer where- /s
- leephillips 9y agoThanks for creating Commento. I tried the demo- it looks excellent. I'm sure I'll be using it somewhere soon.
- cr0sh 9y agoHey, I like your solution; adding some kind of id management like oauth would make it perfect, I think.