Disqus, a dark commenting system • Hacker News Board

Re: Disqus, a dark commenting system

#231

Post by tal8d » Sat, Feb 06, 2021, 12:43 AM UTC

dredmorbius wrote: post #181

tal8d wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well you're going to have a hard to reasoning about it when you stick with the predator/prey, attention economy, zero-sum game analogies. A man running a site cataloging ancient internally generated IBM typeset documents... what higher unstunted form is he aspiring to - despite the machinations of unshriveled fish?

Attention is zero-sum. There are 24 hours in a day. People only spend so much time online. There is no bigger bag or truck.

And? I mean, obviously if you're going to correct me then you know "zero-sum game" refers to game theory. What game is Mr. Typeset playing here?

Re: Disqus, a dark commenting system

#232

Post by Seirdy » Sat, Feb 06, 2021, 1:29 AM UTC

adkadskhj wrote: post #197

carlbordum wrote: post #164

Shameless plug: My friend and I are building a federated commenting system on top of Matrix if anyone is interested. You control the data, your users choose where they want to be signed up, and the system will not disappear overnight because a company decides to discontinue it. And of course there are no trackers/pixels. This is a hobby project that we're launching in three weeks. If you are interested, come talk to…

Can you comment on implementation / challenges of using Matrix for this? I've been working on a dumb git-like and been needing to add syncing. Being a git-like it could just centralize via SSH, but i had also debated a P2P platform like Matrix or IPFS. You use case UI-embedded Matrix interaction is especially interesting to me, because some of the UIs i plan for on this git-like are WASM based, Offline enabled PWAs.…

Even easier would be using Webmentions.

If someone wants to comment on your blog, they can write their own blog post on their blog and send a webmention. That can get linked at the bottom of your blog post with a text snippet summary.

There's no "API" beyond "curl -i -d source=URL -d target=URL WEBMENTION_ENDPOINT" in the traditional sense. Using microformats markup for better exraction is optional.

The result is a federated system of comments owned and controlled by nobody except the original author. No need to use someone's Matrix server or spin up your own. It also imposes a bit of a barrier to entry (must have your own (micro)blog), but if you don't want any random person to leave a comment that can be a feature.

Services like brid.gy turn Fediverse and Twitter comments into Webmentions as well; I've thought about using it for Fediverse comments in the past, but I don't want to host a new program or rely on a third-party service.

Re: Disqus, a dark commenting system

#233

Post by Seirdy » Sat, Feb 06, 2021, 1:33 AM UTC

that_guy_iain wrote: post #131

MisterTea wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can I ask an honest question: Why do you want to allow random people to leave comments on your blog and be responsible for them? I just don't see the value and feel that it just adds technical and security overhead, invites spam, and possibly the need to waste time moderating trash comments. Many blogs that I have visited which demonstrate or explain something technical with a comment section has: spam, accolades suc…

I've ran a blog that was quite popular within the torrent community. The comment section itself was a reason to visit the blog. If you have an active community or you want to build an active community comments are a must. Also, it allows to add more value to your blog at very little effort. If you have someone who comes along and points out another use-case for your information or raises a doubt which you can answer…

You can accomplish the same with a mailing list. Users don't even need to create an account; they just click the "mailto:" link at the bottom of your article and type their comment in their preferred client. They can browse the archives for a threaded discussion.

That being said, the best comment platform for a blog is, imo, someone else's blog. If you want to leave a comment, write your own (micro)blog post and send a Webmention.

I wrote about this in another comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26043298

Re: Disqus, a dark commenting system

#234

Post by freddie_mercury » Sat, Feb 06, 2021, 1:40 AM UTC

sofixa wrote: post #107

hnra wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Plenty of alternatives exist - YouTube Premium ( which also gets you YouTube with no adds, on top of YouTube Music), Amazon Music, Apple Music, and iirc pandora, SoundCloud? I haven't compared prices.

In the country I live in none of those are available other than Apple Music. So the choices are Spotify and Apple Music.

Re: Disqus, a dark commenting system

#235

Post by smcnally » Sat, Feb 06, 2021, 3:14 AM UTC

SSLy wrote: post #111

dmos62 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/

The Music Genome Project came up recently. Thread references code and sample data

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25523729

Re: Disqus, a dark commenting system

#236

Post by rebuilder » Sat, Feb 06, 2021, 4:40 AM UTC

tal8d wrote: post #71

rebuilder wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, the hobbyist web still exists. But it's hampered by the much larger commercial web IMO. The influx of members to any non-commercial web community is disturbed by the commercial entities that draw so much of the attention that to most people, it seems like there isn't anything else on the web. The big fish use up so much oxygen that the little fish in the pond shrivel up. They live, but in a stunted form.

Well you're going to have a hard to reasoning about it when you stick with the predator/prey, attention economy, zero-sum game analogies. A man running a site cataloging ancient internally generated IBM typeset documents... what higher unstunted form is he aspiring to - despite the machinations of unshriveled fish?

One where people visit his site, I suppose.

Re: Disqus, a dark commenting system

#237

Post by winrid » Sat, Feb 06, 2021, 4:58 AM UTC

These are actually all the reasons I built https://fastcomments.com

It was originally just a tiny little project, amazing how things grow.

Re: Disqus, a dark commenting system

#238

Post by winrid » Sat, Feb 06, 2021, 5:02 AM UTC

andrewflnr wrote: post #12

What are good self-hosted alternatives? I remember looking at Commento ( https://github.com/adtac/commento ) before, but if people have had good experiences with others I'd like to hear them.

I run one, and we support migrations from Commento - I already dropped the link once here, don't want to be too spammy :)

I never understood Commento's SSO system. We went with HMAC instead.

Re: Disqus, a dark commenting system

#239

Post by KajMagnus » Sat, Feb 06, 2021, 5:07 AM UTC

andreareina wrote: post #16

andrewflnr wrote: post #12

What are good self-hosted alternatives? I remember looking at Commento ( https://github.com/adtac/commento ) before, but if people have had good experiences with others I'd like to hear them.

I helped someone set up discourse[1] a long time ago, don't know how it stands up these days; it's got basically zero presence in the parts of the web I'm around. [1] https://www.discourse.org/

> basically zero presence in the parts of the web I'm around

What parts of the web are that, if I may ask?

I think Discourse is popular in software and tech related organizations — I see it a lot on such websites.

Re: Disqus, a dark commenting system

#240

Post by onara » Sat, Feb 06, 2021, 7:45 AM UTC

nickjj wrote: post #190

foxhop wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can help you import your users and comments into Remarkbox if you like to move your community.

Thanks a lot for the offer but I think I'm going to decline for now. It's nothing personal or even related to your comment service specifically. For the sake of transparency here's the questions going through my mind and how I arrived at this decision based on using the free version of Disqus: - A lot of people have a Disqus account and having a low barrier of entry to comment is important. When most folks don't need…

While I agree Disqus solves a lot problem as a comment system.

They certainly harvest visitor's data. There are many privacy-friendly comment systems as well as a 3rd party anti-spam service like OOPSpam that do not collect user data. It all boils down to the fact what is your local law says about privacy, and how much you care about your vistiors' privacy.