Formerly free service now tries to monetize. More news at 11
Disqus bait and switch, now with ads
101–110 of 242 posts
Re: Disqus bait and switch, now with ads
#102I have to disagree even as someone relying on Disqus in a few different ways. First off, they did provide notice. I received an email about this at all the addresses I have an account under. Maybe the the author didn't and that sucks but this seems like an edge case and he is one of the exceptions, not the rule. Second, you can turn this feature off which brings me to my next point. Even if they do decide to change t…
It might be a win for you because it's "free", but it's not a win for others. Disqus is sneaky. I don't like sneaky people and more importantly I don't like sneaky companies.
Alerting every single one of their users of an upcoming change before it occurs is sneaky?
Re: Disqus bait and switch, now with ads
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
> you can stop using their service if you dont like it. I just did. > I dont understand this sense of entitlement regarding free services. This free service just made it look as if I endorse a bunch of companies and decided to change my site from non-commercial to commercial. That's my prerogative. > And it is not like disqus did not warn its users , they did. Dont like it ? use something else. They may have warned,…
Currently in their TOS under 'Advertisements': You agree that Disqus may include advertisements and/or content provided by Disqus and/or a third party (collectively “Ads”) as part of the implementation of the Service. Now I don't know if this language was there before the change you are speaking of, but if it wasn't I'm sure included in their TOS was that you agree to them being able to amend their TOS at any time to…
Let's just say that I find an opt-out change of a comment engine to an advertising tag that states that I recommend certain products and services using stealthy advertising a non negotiable move, no matter what your terms of service say.
Re: Disqus bait and switch, now with ads
#104I flagged this article because I think Disqus is providing a great service free of charge. They give you the possibility to turn the ads off and if you turn them on, you actually get a cut! Sounds like a good deal to me.
The negativity and sense of entitlement in this post is very strong and frankly unbearable to me, I hope it won't ruin the Disqus guys day. Making it opt-in would have been a ridiculously bad financial decision as they would have lost revenue from millions of sites already. I hope this change will help the company be profitable and improve their product.
Re: Disqus bait and switch, now with ads
#105This happened last year to one of the sites I manage which uses Disqus. I did not receive notice either, it just happened. And after I turned it off, it got turned on again in December.
Like Jacques I found this incredibly annoying. But unlike Jacques, I decided that the annoyance was outweighed by the convenience that Disqus gives me. We went with Disqus because it was a good UI and easy to implement--that has not changed. I just have placeholder now to check that setting every month or so.
Re: Disqus bait and switch, now with ads
#106I have to disagree even as someone relying on Disqus in a few different ways. First off, they did provide notice. I received an email about this at all the addresses I have an account under. Maybe the the author didn't and that sucks but this seems like an edge case and he is one of the exceptions, not the rule. Second, you can turn this feature off which brings me to my next point. Even if they do decide to change t…
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Re: Disqus bait and switch, now with ads
#107Thank you for reminding me to check if I could finally delete my account - I can and I did. It was impossible to delete accounts due to an "issue" in their system for the last 3 or 4 months and was only fixed within the couple few weeks. I only realized it because I found posts that I'd made anonymously years prior were showing up when I Googled my name. I was horrified. These posts were just one-off comments that served no benefit to being associated with my primary account, but the idea that this was happening to people hoping to stay anonymous in more serious situations was still eye-opening.
I assume that comments left without being logged into a Disqus account (but while passively logged into a Gmail account) were automatically associated with your email and indexed by Google under your real name without any verification on your end. Disqus thinks that this is some sort of beneficial feature rather than a potential breach of privacy, and has you go through and remove these posts after-the-fact. There was no way to disassociate the comments from my account than to delete them, so while I didn't actually want to remove the comments from the contexts they were in, I had no choice.
Today it tells you that there are "guest comments" that are associated with your email address, and asks if you'd like to merge them, but doesn't show you what they are nor is there an option to delete them before merging. I don't want to merge comments into my account that I can't even see first, and I'd much rather delete my account entirely than risk having them continue to be associated with my namesake.
These things, in addition to these suggested ads which are disguised as posts also written or endorsed by the author and in my experience totally unrelated if not straight-up offensive (saw a recommended link on a serious blog promoting an article on some famous floozy's nip slip) have completely put me off to using Disqus and commenting on sites that utilize it. Whether or not they are deliberately trying to be shady or if their UX just sucks, it isn't worth it to me.
Re: Disqus bait and switch, now with ads
#108I have to disagree even as someone relying on Disqus in a few different ways. First off, they did provide notice. I received an email about this at all the addresses I have an account under. Maybe the the author didn't and that sucks but this seems like an edge case and he is one of the exceptions, not the rule. Second, you can turn this feature off which brings me to my next point. Even if they do decide to change t…
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...hm, now the www-link does the same so it's something else
Re: Disqus bait and switch, now with ads
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
You agreed to their terms and conditions upon sign up. It says: "We may, without prior notice, change the Service;"
And my terms of service read 'and if you change your terms of service in a way that I don't like I will disable your plug-in and I'll bitch about it'.
That doesn't make any sense. You agreed to their terms of service and now you're complaining because it doesn't match your ideals. Disqus is a great service provided for free, what did you expect?
Re: Disqus bait and switch, now with ads
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thats the tradeoff you have to deal with if you want to use a free service.
There are many other ways for a free service to make changes like this. Grandfathering existing users, to name one example which probably would have made jacques a lot happier.
True, but I think the bigger point is: why do you believe you have any right to demand anything? The service is free, you should be expected that the service you are not paying a dime for may do things you don't quite like once in a while.
I think the bigger issue here is the entitlement that seems to come with every service online now days. People seem to think they are entitled to demand whatever they like and how they like it for things they aren't even paying someone for. I think the best example of this was all of the whining about Craigslist suing Padmapper because it was ripping off Craigslist content and trying to piggyback off of the work CL has put into building their brand and infrastructure.