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I’ve removed Disqus. It was making my blog worse

ryansouthgate.com

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Re: I’ve removed Disqus. It was making my blog worse

#201

Post by rchaud »

ants_everywhere wrote: post #169
D13Fd wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Come on. There is a massive difference between an ad that optimistically emphasizes the best aspects of a real product or service and an ad for a fake product or service that will take your money and leave you with essentially nothing.

It's legal to advertise real products or services that will take your money and leave you with essentially nothing. For example: - gambling, e.g. slot machines, sports betting - healing crystals - palm readings - carnival games Perhaps the right distinction is whether something is legally a fraud or not. But I kind of agree that most ads are scams and also that ad networks don't have the ability to separate legal sca…

Yes, these scams have aleays been there. The distinction was that advertisers like newspapers and magazines had a standards body that would reject ad placements that were insulting to their audience's intelligence.

Re: I’ve removed Disqus. It was making my blog worse

#202

Post by detourdog »

mort96 wrote: post #117
lupusreal wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ad industry likes to say that their industry is clean and the people who buy ads for scams are the problem, but the truth is the entire industry is complicit with the scamming, and stuff like this shows it. If the ad industry were merely hapless victims of the scammers, rather than willful participants in the scamming, they'd be eager to receive reports of scams.

I feel like there are almost two completely incompatible stories being sold by ad tech people. One is that "you shouldn't use an ad blocker, reputable websites have ads from Google and other reputable companies and they wouldn't be scams or malware". The other is that any time there's a story about malware and scams on reputable websites, they say: "there are so many ads being submitted, Google is doing their best bu…

My mail server easily gets the most phishing attempts from gmail. This is due to my unwillingness to blacklist Gmail. I report the abuse through there abuse page. The results in a slowdown while the abuser reformulates their sending process. I know this by watching the changes to the sending path in the header of the phishing attempts. The content and subject often don’t change but the header does.

Re: I’ve removed Disqus. It was making my blog worse

#204

Post by analog8374 »

bilekas wrote: post #50

It's disgusting what the internet has become, in this case it's even more egregious that the author as far as I see isn't even making any commission off of these ads, not that that would justify it. And then you have companies like Google who will punish you intentionally for using tools to reduce the amount of spam you're exposed to on your own device. We need a better model of financially supporting websites and se…

It's like that episode of black mirror where if he shut his eyes to the ads it would start yelling at him.

Re: I’ve removed Disqus. It was making my blog worse

#205

Post by spcebar »

tcfhgj wrote: post #71
mrweasel wrote: post #63

Other than the volume, one of the issues I have with these types of ads is that you're rarely able to report them as scams. Reddit have a similar issue. You can report an ad, but you have to pick "Other", there's no: "This ad is clearly a scam". That's by design obviously, because by removing the scams, most of the ad networks are left with very little inventory. Certainly not enough to fund all the ad supported serv…

almost every ad is a scam, telling lies directly or indirectly maximizing what is within the legal bounds.

Having worked in the world of e-commerce, there are genuinely good companies run by good people making genuinely good products that no one knows about, and one of the ways they try and get people to know about their products is advertising. In one case, this is a product that replaced something already in your home, it's materially better, and it's materially cheaper in the long term. How do you create an ad for that that doesn't sound like a lie?

Re: I’ve removed Disqus. It was making my blog worse

#206

Post by zenmac »

niutech wrote: post #93
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counterpoint, blog posts age; information or opinion from 10 years ago may no longer be accurate or reflect the author's held beliefs. Is it still worth discussing it then? That said, I run old fashioned forums and some older threads get revived there from time to time with new insights. Others get flagged up by copyright holders under DMCA takedown threats or bumped by spambots though.

Not necessarily 10 years ago, you cannot comment on a HN post even from a month ago!

Why is that? Be good to join discussion from the past and bring back some zombie thread? No?

Re: I’ve removed Disqus. It was making my blog worse

#207

Post by wizzwizz4 »

spcebar wrote: post #205
tcfhgj wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

almost every ad is a scam, telling lies directly or indirectly maximizing what is within the legal bounds.

Having worked in the world of e-commerce, there are genuinely good companies run by good people making genuinely good products that no one knows about, and one of the ways they try and get people to know about their products is advertising. In one case, this is a product that replaced something already in your home, it's materially better, and it's materially cheaper in the long term. How do you create an ad for that…

You have a curated directory of actually decent stuff, and you list the item there. Don't wrestle with the pigs.

Re: I’ve removed Disqus. It was making my blog worse

#208

Post by guywithahat »

huijzer wrote: post #30

I just can't be bothered to have comments on my site. It adds nothing but headaches. Cross-posting articles to HN or Reddit for comments is a much nicer way, I think.

But then people who find your blog can't comment on it without knowing the cross-post, and you risk spamming HN

Re: I’ve removed Disqus. It was making my blog worse

#209

Post by mort96 »

detourdog wrote: post #202
mort96 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like there are almost two completely incompatible stories being sold by ad tech people. One is that "you shouldn't use an ad blocker, reputable websites have ads from Google and other reputable companies and they wouldn't be scams or malware". The other is that any time there's a story about malware and scams on reputable websites, they say: "there are so many ads being submitted, Google is doing their best bu…

My mail server easily gets the most phishing attempts from gmail. This is due to my unwillingness to blacklist Gmail. I report the abuse through there abuse page. The results in a slowdown while the abuser reformulates their sending process. I know this by watching the changes to the sending path in the header of the phishing attempts. The content and subject often don’t change but the header does.

I bet that if you were using gmail, those phishing mails would end up in your trash ... which raises the question: why does Google allow people who Google's own spam-filter can detect are sending 99% spam to keep sending e-mail?

Re: I’ve removed Disqus. It was making my blog worse

#210

Post by spcebar »

tetris11 wrote: post #102
D13Fd wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Come on. There is a massive difference between an ad that optimistically emphasizes the best aspects of a real product or service and an ad for a fake product or service that will take your money and leave you with essentially nothing.

I think the poster is lamenting the general quality of all advertised products in general. If it's a brand of good quality (Miele, Henry, DeLonghi) it probably does not need to be advertised, as word of mouth and price point is generally enough.

I should start by saying that I find ads incredibly irritating in any form. That said, Miele and DeLonghi are both more than a hundred year old companies. Maybe they don't need to advertise because they have such solidly establish brand identities, but they do advertise and they have advertised throughout their history as companies. Ads are a way of maintaining brand awareness, introducing new products, and creating demand. Even if you have an incredibly solid product with good word of mouth there is still benefit to advertising it.
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