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Disqus, a dark commenting system

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Re: Disqus, a dark commenting system

#111

Post by SSLy »

dmos62 wrote: post #100
xfz wrote: post #94

Title should probably have [Advert] prefix or something. That said, I deleted my Disqus account as part of a general cleanup and I'm glad I did. The web needs to shift more to a model where people pay openly for services; ideally with micropayments or a Spotify-like subscription to ensure a large user base. Free products are ok as a gateway to the paid product, but not if the business model relies on selling data (ei…

Spotify relies on monopolizing your listening data. You should avoid it on the same premise. Delivering music is easy; their unique offering is the recommendation engine. There's no competition because there's no open listening data. If we could make it open, then you could have actual competition in the space (coincidentlly Spotify recommendations aren't great at the moment).

>There's no competition because there's no open listening data.

https://listenbrainz.org/

Re: Disqus, a dark commenting system

#113

Post by vvatermelone »

loop22 wrote: post #97
h_anna_h wrote: post #82

I have (had) a Disqus account that I connected to via my google account. I say had because I haven't been able to login in a year or so via firefox. I just get a page that says "There was an error submitting the form. If you're having difficulty, try repeating the action on https://disqus.com " with an annoying meme gift on the background. Luckily the title of the page says "Embed: CSRF verification failed (403)" but…

> I wish there was some kind of service or plugin (preferably not based on a centralized service) where one could easily leave comments on any site even if the site itself did not support comments. IIRC the Dissenter extension was just that, albeit centralized.

There's an extension called Epiverse that does something similar. It used to have its own comment sections like Dissenter, but has since shifted to just showing discussions on reddit/HN that point to the webpage you're currently on. It's actually how I discovered HN.

Re: Disqus, a dark commenting system

#114

Post by strogonoff »

Un1corn wrote: post #42
strogonoff wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a service is paid while allowing itself to engage in data mining and monetisation, it will lose most of its paying users to a more ethical competitor as soon as someone bothers to read the ToS. If a paid service engages in data mining in violation of its own ToS, it is liable to be punished by law as soon as that leaks, so that’s another counter-incentive. The expectation of free service is what enables shady prac…

>it will lose most of its paying users to a more ethical competitor as soon as someone bothers to read the ToS So never? People don't read the ToS and certainly don't judge services by it. It seems people have come to accept surveillance capitalism as a fact of life

People do and people do. The first person to jump on this will get thousands of retweets in publicity as others pile on to get justice.

Of course, there’s no “justice” to speak of if you get stuff for free, so paid social is where it’s at. Paying customer to service provider relationship is radically different from one of a product-to-dealer.

Normalising free service is exactly what incumbent de-facto monopolies want, it empowers them and destroys any potential for competition. They hate paying users because that’d mean actual responsibility and people voting with their money.

Re: Disqus, a dark commenting system

#115

Post by tupshin »

stonesweep wrote: post #109
hnra wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does any other service deliver music and podcasts at a much lower price then?

Shoutcast/Icecast are alive and well, there are thousands of independent radio stations online; one of the most well known (SomaFM) is alive and well, ad free listener supported. Big Sonic Heaven is still online, both of these are like 20 years and running. Lots of podcasts are free from their source, Spotify doesn't even offer one of favorite ones (a weekly DJ mix, 500+ episodes strong) all you need is an app like A…

In that vein, I'd suggest Radio Paradise. Also add free, listener supported, and has been streaming amazing mixes for over 20 years.

https://radioparadise.com/

Re: Disqus, a dark commenting system

#117

Post by stonesweep »

tupshin wrote: post #115
stonesweep wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shoutcast/Icecast are alive and well, there are thousands of independent radio stations online; one of the most well known (SomaFM) is alive and well, ad free listener supported. Big Sonic Heaven is still online, both of these are like 20 years and running. Lots of podcasts are free from their source, Spotify doesn't even offer one of favorite ones (a weekly DJ mix, 500+ episodes strong) all you need is an app like A…

In that vein, I'd suggest Radio Paradise. Also add free, listener supported, and has been streaming amazing mixes for over 20 years. https://radioparadise.com/

Thank you for the reverse share! Much appreciated, ill give it a listen here in a bit (6am here :) ). In return, my podcast mentioned above is Resident - Hernan Cattaneo, podcast.hernancattaneo.com - weekly new progressive house music mixes.

Re: Disqus, a dark commenting system

#118

Post by matsemann »

xfz wrote: post #94

Title should probably have [Advert] prefix or something. That said, I deleted my Disqus account as part of a general cleanup and I'm glad I did. The web needs to shift more to a model where people pay openly for services; ideally with micropayments or a Spotify-like subscription to ensure a large user base. Free products are ok as a gateway to the paid product, but not if the business model relies on selling data (ei…

> I deleted my Disqus account as part of a general cleanup and I'm glad I did.

Yeah, their data breach exposing mine and 18 million other's accounts made it the last time I used them.

Re: Disqus, a dark commenting system

#119

Post by duckmysick »

geek_at wrote: post #48
alexgmcm wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I think the problem with self-hosting vs. Medium is that it is harder for the authors to reach a large audience. I mean, even if you don't want to make money from your cool project or tutorial or whatever, you still want people to see it. But man, I really hate Medium.

not true, I have started a blog and hosted it on blogspot at first but wasn't satisfied with the style in general and the lack of customization so I built my own in bootstrap + php and hosted it on a 5€/month Server. No tracking, no ads, no external libraries, no referral links, no monetization. After switching to my own I re-wrote one of the articles of my old blogspot posts (word for word) and because my custom sol…

Can't a person write interesting stuff on Medium/Blogspot/Wordpress? Telling a person, who wants to blog about fruit preserves, to learn php and selfhost is a bit too much.

Re: Disqus, a dark commenting system

#120

Post by hilbert42 »

pjc50 wrote: post #77
tal8d wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been around long enough to remember a time when the web was full of content that didn't originate from profit motive. Just a bunch of people talking about their interests and sharing their creations. Even the stuff that was commercially motivated was largely innocuous, because they were focused more on brand awareness - which doesn't need a surveillance system. All that personal interest stuff is still out there…

The web is still full of content that didn't originate from profit motive - you're looking at some - but it's wrapped up in and presented on for-profit sites. The friction point is not so much presenting/hosting content as "discovery" - finding interesting new people and new content. And that's much more complicated because it's full of perverse incentives.

"The web is still full of content that didn't originate from profit motive"

Very true but with a few notable exceptions - successes such geek_at says he's had, others have pointed out that self-funded, self-hosted sites don't get the large visitor coverage of the big conglomerate/commercial sites. This stands to reason and it's a damn shame.

It seems to me a way around this would be to have a common universally-wide index type site where all the free, no-ads, no spying sites would be listed.

Similarity, this index site would be spy-free, no ads and free for visitors to use but those listed would pay a small listing fee to cover site running costs. To keep listing costs to a minimum the site would be non profit, revenue-neutral and run as a cooperative society or similar non profit structure.

To stop cohersive pressures from commercial interests, commercial, for profit sites/businesses would not be allowed to list.

The site itself would be indexed and cross referenced along topic lines using the Dewey Decimal Classification system or similar schemes that libraries use to classify books.

This would have the advantage of grouping likemined/likekind websites together in ways that were easy for visitors to browse from one to another. The listing for each site could also include a short description.

This index site would cover just about every topic imaginable and thus attract many sites for listing which would provide economies of scale. For example:

- Trades/Woodworking/Cabinetmaking

- Science/Physics/QM/Quantum Field Theory/Yang-Mills

- Philosophy/Utilitarianism/Jeremy Bentham

Right, the site could easily contain interests as diverse as any book library, and it could even have its own internal search engine.

It seems to me that we desperately need such an independant nonprofit site on the web. It's our only reasonable hope of escaping the centralization created by Facebook, Google, etc.

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