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Disqus, a dark commenting system

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Re: Disqus, a dark commenting system

#241

Post by Daho0n »

h_anna_h wrote: post #78
Daho0n wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This gets repeated over and over on HN but it isn't true. I feel this is because so many try to make GDPR seem too hard and breaking everything (likely people with something to lose). GDPR is for data in the EU . That is it. Not data outside the EU and not people outside the EU. An American in the EU is covered, an EU citizen in the US is not. What you are saying would require that the EU could create laws that were…

> I feel this is because so many try to make GDPR seem too hard and breaking everything (likely people with something to lose). Or people who wish to extend the reach of GDPR so that others outside of the EU are protected too. > What you are saying would require that the EU could create laws that were above the Supreme Court in the US for example This is not true for multiple reasons. Check out https://en.wikipedia.o…

Let me rephrase: If the data is in the EU it is covered by GDPR no matter where the person that creates the data is at (yes in the US too) but the person isn't covered by the GDPR, the data (that is in the EU) is covered. It is not the same thing. What most people seem to think is the EU overreaching and "making laws that reach outsides its borders" is in cases where a foreign company (like Facebook) gets regulated by GDPR even though the company is outside the EU. This is because the data is in the EU and of course data in the EU isn't under US or any other entities law but EU (and member states). If you transfer data outside the EU you either do so illegally or have to follow the rules of the GDPR. It still doesn't reach outside the EU borders. Of course if you do something criminally the EU might judge you no matter where you are at just like the US with PROTECT Act of 2003 but that is another matter.

Re: Disqus, a dark commenting system

#242

Post by akvadrako »

mrjn wrote: post #228
chewxy wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dgraph Labs uses it. I am a bit ambivalent about it. For example: https://dgraph.io/blog/post/putting-it-all-together-part1/ Here it says 7 comments. But you only get to see one. You have to click into the discourse post to get more. This is due to Discourse's threading model. 6 of the comments were replying to the one on the blog post itself.

Discourse prefers a single level threading model, until Reddit or HN. So, you can in fact see all the 7 comments there. Not sure why you only see one.

I also only see one - probably just a bug due to different browsers/adblockers.

Re: Disqus, a dark commenting system

#243

Post by Daho0n »

seanhunter wrote: post #150
Daho0n wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This gets repeated over and over on HN but it isn't true. I feel this is because so many try to make GDPR seem too hard and breaking everything (likely people with something to lose). GDPR is for data in the EU . That is it. Not data outside the EU and not people outside the EU. An American in the EU is covered, an EU citizen in the US is not. What you are saying would require that the EU could create laws that were…

Hmm. I actually said that because that's what the GDPR training that I was forced to undertake by my employer taught me. That being said, reading the reguglation now shows me that was a misunderstanding. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELE... That being said it wouldn't require the EU to create laws which have jurisdiction above the US supreme court - if a company has any activity within Euro…

What you are describing in the case of the GDPR would be like a US company - Facebook for example - being regulated by the GDPR. But while Facebook is in the US the data someone in the EU is creating is inside the EU, so it doesn't really matter if Facebook is targeting EU citizens or not since the data is not (at first at least) in the US and transferring it there is illegal if it doesn't follow the GDPR. That being said I'm aware that there are situations where a country will punish something happening elsewhere but it still isn't reaching outside its borders. If the EU want to punish Mark Zuckerberg it cannot touch him or his assets unless they are inside the EU without the cooperation of the local court or government. That was the reason Privacy Shield got overturned.

Re: Disqus, a dark commenting system

#244

Post by lytefm »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #217
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).

This reminds me I need to find an open source scrobbler compatible with Lastfm's API.

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

I wonder why last.fm hasn't managed to leverage their data more, if that was really the biggest value of Spotify. Or perhaps they do and sell it to streaming services? Idc

Re: Disqus, a dark commenting system

#245

Post by lytefm »

Tallain wrote: post #193
hnra wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I believe the price is similar, but Deezer[0] has a decent music library plus podcasts. Its recommendation engine also works a little differently. The "Flow" engine lets you listen as a radio station with known and unknown tracks thrown in with actually decent recommendations. Much better than Spotify, which only ever "recommended" artists I've already listened to, or artists I didn't like, or genres I didn't. If you…

Yeah Deezer isn't too bad. Dealbreaker for Spotify:Linux Client and Years of Play lists.

Re: Disqus, a dark commenting system

#246

Post by Talanes »

bachmeier wrote: post #64
Talanes wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The market-based approach wouldn't have these companies rolling back their surveillance, but consumers en masse moving over to paid, privacy-focused alternatives. I don't actually consider this remotely likely, but the world is getting weirder, so I'm not writing off the highly improbable so easily.

> The market-based approach wouldn't have these companies rolling back their surveillance, but consumers en masse moving over to paid, privacy-focused alternatives. I see what you're saying, but you're referring to something like a "market-based solution" to this problem. The one and only market-based outcome is the one we have. This is a case of imperfect information. There's no reason to expect a market-only approa…

"What has happened is all that could happen" is surely not the best line of argument you have?

Re: Disqus, a dark commenting system

#247

Post by strogonoff »

orangepanda wrote: post #41
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…

> If a service is paid while allowing itself to engage in data mining and monetisation, it will lose most of its paying users Will it lose some users? Sure. Most? No. You can buy a tv costing 4 digits that happily will harvest data and show you ads.

First, could you name this TV set so that others don’t make the same mistake? TV prices decreased a lot over past years (50 inch 4K units go for below $500 I think), in fact I suspect that the hardware is sponsored by ad revenue in some cases.

Second, context matters. Buying a TV is different from setting up a commenting system for your site. In one case you want to consume, in the other to be a service provider (you have a website, possibly generate profit from it, probably know what JavaScript is). Moreover, you are unlikely to be able to make your own TV, but you are much more likely to be able to set up your own commenting system if you can’t find a company to handle that responsibly.

Re: Disqus, a dark commenting system

#248

Post by youngdynasty »

I’d rather just tweet a link to a blog post and let the discussion happen there. Plus, you get “free” eyeballs on it since it’ll appear in the commenter’s social graph.

If you wanted to “own” the data, you could periodically scrape the tweet’s comments.

I think there’s a cool product somewhere in there.

Re: Disqus, a dark commenting system

#249

Post by nickjj »

onara wrote: post #240
nickjj wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> There are many privacy-friendly comment systems as well as a 3rd party anti-spam service like OOPSpam that do not collect user data.

If there were a free fully managed comment system that you could embed onto a site that guaranteed user's privacy, didn't track anything, had billions of comments pumped through it to ensure it's technically adequate and they had multiple years of a good track record for reliability along with a spam filter that blocks 99% of spam hands free I would instantly switch. But I don't think any type of solution like this exists.

Just using OOPSpam alone comes with a $17 / month fee and based on its FAQ it looks like you need to call its API which means it wouldn't work with a static site like Disqus does because OOPSpam requires making an API call from a server with a secret key.

Re: Disqus, a dark commenting system

#250

Post by tal8d »

rebuilder wrote: post #236
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?

One where people visit his site, I suppose.

Just people randomly stumbling in with zero interest in the subject? Or people who had previously been captured by a rival typeset historian backed by a powerful multinational commercial interest? Because one of those is a search engine problem and the other is a goofy attention economy based concern.
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