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Disqus bait and switch, now with ads

jacquesmattheij.com

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Re: Disqus bait and switch, now with ads

#191

Post by ahoyhere »

danielha wrote: post #128

Hi Jacques, I’m Daniel from Disqus. Hopefully I can clear some stuff up. As others in this thread have pointed out, we haven’t really been shy about what we’re doing here. You can see a progress update of how things are going on blog.disqus.com (it’s the second post down as I write this). We’ve put a lot of effort into being communicative around what we’re doing with discovery and advertising (we call it Promoted Dis…

"We’ve put a lot of effort into being communicative around what we’re doing with discovery and advertising (we call it Promoted Discovery)."

This sentence is a microcosm of exactly what's going on. This is not a sentence a normal person would write, nor would a normal person read it and understand.

The excerpts from the "notice" sent out, found above, tell the rest of the story.

When people use weaselly phrasing like "being communicative around what we're doing" and emails with innocuous and deadly boring subject lines like "Growing with Disqus" with surprise-now-you're-advertising-for-us bombs inside, what conclusion can we draw?

Looks like deliberate obfuscation to me.

And as Douglas Adams wrote, "If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family Anatidae on our hands."

Re: Disqus bait and switch, now with ads

#192

Post by PotatoEngineer »

marksands07 wrote: post #165
callahad wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> advertising (we call it Promoted Discovery) Oh, come on, you guys are better than this.

Have you seen Twitter's "Sponsored Tweets", Facebook's "Sponsored Stories", Amazon's "Inspired by your browsing history". Ditching the word "advertising" is nothing new and we all use sites like these every day.

"Sponsored" implies an advertising relationship, even if it avoids the dread word - sponsors pay you. "Inspired by your browsing history" is accurate, and is Amazon advertising Amazon - you're on a shopping site, seeing more links to shopping shouldn't surprise you. "Promoted Discovery" is a new and unrecognized flavor of newspeak; it's not just avoiding the word "advertising," it's hard to even recognize as advertising.

Re: Disqus bait and switch, now with ads

#193

Post by ville »

kamjam wrote: post #166
MatthewPhillips wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi Daniel, why was it not opt-in? You describe it as a "revenue sharing" program, but did not ask your customers if they wanted to be part of it. You assumed their silence meant that they did.

Because that's how most options that are likely to make money are rolled out these days. Disqus are not the only one using these tactics. I can't find the link the anti-patterns video/site, I'm sure someone will know the one I am talking about. But it's things like pre-selecting paid for delivery options, adding travel insurance to flight cost etc etc to drive up costs but then make it not obvious how to remove those…

> I can't find the link the anti-patterns video/site, I'm sure someone will know the one I am talking about.

This one? http://darkpatterns.org/library/bait_and_switch/

Re: Disqus bait and switch, now with ads

#194

Post by electic »

Shortcut. Shortcut. Shortcut. Shortcut. Shortcut. If you use cloud services to shortcut your infrastructure, you are not in control. Use another provider for your billing system, you are not in control. Same here. You are not in control so you have no reason to complain when they try to make money. If you want to do it right, just use some software that keeps the comments and all infrastructure on your site. Simple. Or better yet, write your own. It is not that hard at all.

Re: Disqus bait and switch, now with ads

#196

Post by Zak »

mkr-hn wrote: post #188
brown9-2 wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The message being labeled with "Promotions" is as the result of a filter you created, right?

It's the new smart labels feature. It's automatic.

I'm pretty sure smart labels is opt-in, so it's more fair to say that it's the result of a filtering feature the user turned on but does not explicitly control and cannot accurately predict.

Re: Disqus bait and switch, now with ads

#198

Post by Sujan »

marksands07 wrote: post #165
callahad wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> advertising (we call it Promoted Discovery) Oh, come on, you guys are better than this.

Have you seen Twitter's "Sponsored Tweets", Facebook's "Sponsored Stories", Amazon's "Inspired by your browsing history". Ditching the word "advertising" is nothing new and we all use sites like these every day.

It's _Sponsored_ Tweets and _Sponsored_ Stories. It's not the same word, but "sponsored" means that it's advertising. Even "Promoted Stories" would be fine, still means the same thing. "Reommended content" is something totally different.

The Amazon example doesn't apply at all, as its internal linking to products. External advertising is clearly labeled as such on Amazon, too.

Disqus shows their advertising on a site of a different person. This changes a lot and makes this especially nasty.

Re: Disqus bait and switch, now with ads

#199

Post by homosaur »

danielha wrote: post #128

Hi Jacques, I’m Daniel from Disqus. Hopefully I can clear some stuff up. As others in this thread have pointed out, we haven’t really been shy about what we’re doing here. You can see a progress update of how things are going on blog.disqus.com (it’s the second post down as I write this). We’ve put a lot of effort into being communicative around what we’re doing with discovery and advertising (we call it Promoted Dis…

All I can say to Disqus is a big "fuck you" and I will never be back. At least try to sell me something. Right now, it's either whore out my blog to your advertisers or pay $999 for VIP service. The first rule of making a product is to actually sell something. I'd pay $10 or $20 a month to keep the whoring off my blog but there's no option for that.

Good day sir.

Re: Disqus bait and switch, now with ads

#200

Post by thedufer »

danielha wrote: post #128

Hi Jacques, I’m Daniel from Disqus. Hopefully I can clear some stuff up. As others in this thread have pointed out, we haven’t really been shy about what we’re doing here. You can see a progress update of how things are going on blog.disqus.com (it’s the second post down as I write this). We’ve put a lot of effort into being communicative around what we’re doing with discovery and advertising (we call it Promoted Dis…

I think the most concerning part of this is hiding it from site owners when they're logged in. This feels like an admission that what you're doing is wrong, and that it needs to be hidden from the people who can turn it off. How did you come to that particular decision?
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