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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

#231

Post by rchaud »

mschuster91 wrote: post #58
reactordev wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There used to be a time when comments were attached to the posts. Where anyone could come, leave their name and a comment, and let the author know if any edits, misspellings, or how they liked the article. Social media ruined that. Everyone is now on their own soap box posting comments of drivel from their sub-optimal self-conscious parroting asinine talking points about how one characterized group of statistics ruin…

> Social media ruined that. Everyone is now on their own soap box posting comments of drivel from their sub-optimal self-conscious parroting asinine talking points about how one characterized group of statistics ruined it for everyone else. Partially agree, partially disagree. Blog comments were already dead when SEO fraudsters discovered that "linkbacks" could be abused for spam even easier than comments were.

Correct. Site owners moved their communities over to social media pages because they couldn't handle moderating the waves of spam comments that littered every single post on their site. They figured, let Facebook/Twitter handle moderation. Then FB closed the gates, de-emphasized posts with outbound links and now site owners are screwed.

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

#232

Post by whatamidoingyo »

Same. I bit and upgraded my account to get rid of the ads. But it still didn't feel great using their software, so I just built commenting into my site after switching from static site to a fullstack setup. They made it difficult to cancel the subscription. I had to send an email to cancel it... like what?

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

#235

Post by liampulles »

From conception, I've never wanted a comment section on my blog. I just put a line that in effect says "if you want to comment, you can send me an email at xyz".

If you are coming to a blog post of mine that has been shared to you, my assumption is that you want to read my article, and not to be distracted by whatever performance is happening in the comment section. I am aiding you by not even putting a comment section there.

I realize there is a slim chance for there to be enlightening conversation in a blog comment section - but that is not what my blog is for. You are better served doing that here on HN or a more dedicated forum. Here it can be be more visible for others, for people who want to read discourse.

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

#236

Post by ftchd »

est wrote: post #6

I ditched Disqus for the exact same reason, too many ads Then I built an alternative using free Cloudflare Worker https://github.com/est/req4cmt It's a simple service that transform comment POST form data to JSON, append to a .jsonl file, then do a `git push` It renders comments by `git fetch` from a .jsonl file from a remote repo, or simply via raw.githubusercontent.com if your repo was hosted by Github. The advanta…

pardon my ignorance, but isn't there a solution that adds a Github comment box right below your post, and you comment directly with your Github account?

isn't that better IF the commenter has a GH account? (if you're writing a personal tech blog, then it's not a problem, your readers are Github users already)

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

#237

Post by dylan604 »

thesuitonym wrote: post #223
dylan604 wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And how do you get people to view said directory if they've never heard of it?

Consider that Hacker News does not advertise, and yet somehow you are here.

Hacker News does not depend on me buying products from it for it's survival. If you can't see the difference in why a company cannot depend on word of mouth, then you're just really not trying to have an honest conversation.

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

#238

Post by bradlys »

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…

Genuinely curious: why do I always get scammy ads in iOS apps and Google products but I don’t see anywhere near the same amount on Instagram or TikTok?

Are Meta and TikTok better at filtering scammy ads out? Maybe their ML recommendation systems realize I’d never click on such an ad and the other platforms can’t figure that out.

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

#239

Post by internetter »

est wrote: post #159
bmez wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and the wasted CPU and memory involved. Git is by no means a good design for a comment-system, it is overcomplicating it in ways previously unimaginable.

> Git is by no means a good design for a comment-system I did try to implement partial-clone but failed Let's be honest, for a personal blog, >1k comments is an overestimate. It is painful for writing, but reading comments is quite fast and 99% is about loading.

> Let's be honest, for a personal blog, >1k comments is an overestimate.

Maybe, maybe not. Before 2024, my blog got <10k views/y. Then in 2024 it got close to 1 million (this year it will likely be 100k). Very hard to predict traffic thanks to hn and stuff!

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

#240

Post by godshatter »

D13Fd wrote: post #91
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.

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'm willing to throw that away to get rid of the scammy ads. It would be nice if there were ad networks that were vigilant about who they let use their service, but "money", I guess. So adblockers it is.
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