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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

#261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bet they tried an llm scam detector. It was too good so they didn't put it into production.

i can write that in like 2 minutes in any language you want. `pseudo main( return True )` There's a difference between "Need a tree cut down? I am licensed and bonded and cut down trees; call ###" and the sort of things that we all consider "ads". If someone can't see a difference, then that someone probably receives money from advertising.

One of the few sorts of ads I'm okay with are those sort of ads for local businesses on the paper placemats at local restaurants. Those stick around and are seen by countless people so if it's a scam word will get around.

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

#262

"After years with Pi-hole, which now blocks over a million domains, I’ve become incredibly accustomed to a mostly ad-free web. Without realizing it, I’d forgotten what the typical internet experience feels like." It is estimated that between 30% and 50% of Internet users run ad blockers. I haven't see a single ad in years. Besides, Pi-holes are kind of overrated. First, ad blockers running in the browser are simply m…

I don't use "pi-hole", just an in-browser blocker (ublock origin) and am happy. But I would assume a "pi-hole" would be a useful addition to a household using a variety of potentially ad-infested devices e.g. a smart TV, various tablets etc.

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

#263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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

It's the way it used to be done with paper catalogues. If you're looking for a snowmobile then you go get a snowmobile catalog from a dealer who you looked up in a phonebook. But advertisers don't want to wait for somebody to decide they want a thing, they want to brainwash otherwise content people into wanting something they didn't previously want.

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

#264
With very little fanfare Google added an "AI Mode" button next to the search which adds a much more competent question answering engine than those awful summaries that appear at the top of most searches. (On a yes/no question they often give different answers and the "AI Mode" is right)

On one hand there is the impact on web sites which will lose more traffic but on the other hand this will kill the trash ad networks (maybe good in many senses but problematic from antitrust perspective) and also also a lot of trash sites that dominate search results. No more fandom, no more Forbes. The trouble is that the web accessible from Google has been so bad for so long that people aren't going to miss it.

For instance I've been playing the game Arknights where there is a pool of 366 'operators' of which every player has a subset so it is difficult to give a walkthrough that works for everyone and you often have questions like 'Should I use resources to upgrade operator A, B, C or D?' and AI Mode gives me a good explanation of the tradeoffs -- the alternative is Fandom sites which have endless incomprehensible tables or spending hours surfing Reddit where half of the opinions are off the wall, complete garbage ads are blended seamlessly into the content and god forbid I accidentally hit the mouse button anywhere because I get navigated somewhere completely random which might be NSFW.

Similarly I was helping my son look for a rackmount MIDI synth and you could spend hours watching people drone on about it on YouTube or looking at Ebay listings or other sources or you could get some good choices that are well explained and have some links.

The "dead internet" is finally going to die.

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

#265
post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Plenty companies don't advertise by shoving unwanted ads in people's faces.

There are plenty of companies I haven't heard of. QED

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

#266
post #186

I use Mastodon for comments on one of my sites using a slightly modified version of the code featured here: https://carlschwan.eu/2020/12/29/adding-comments-to-your-sta... As the site is focused on a single topic, I almost always tag a related Lemmy community in the Mastodon post, so it gets comments from there too. Federation is cool.

I ended up going this route too and really like it. There are lots of guides out there with different solutions, all really easy to implement.

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

#267
post #117

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…

It's been that way a long time with other media. I used to work out a lot during the day and would wind up watching TV in the daypart aimed at people who don't have their own money to spend on things and there were ads running for about a decade that were obviously a scam.

https://oig.hhs.gov/fraud/consumer-alerts/fraud-alert-nation...

When you heard the vocal equivalent of large type text every real person knew that it was time to get grandma away from the TV but... the people at the TV network didn't, law enforcement didn't, your congressman didn't, anybody in a position of power didn't. And no wonder people feel cynical, hate the media, distrust the cops, distrust politicians, feel "the game is rigged", etc.

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

#268

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.

It also doesn’t help that so many creators - even legitimate ones - now use injected ads that they don’t verify at all. I remember listening to an episode of Better Offline a buddy sent me and anyone who knows about Ed knows that basically half his crusade is against bad AI implementation/“slop”/etc. He’s broadly against the current LLM rush. First ad when I fired up the podcast episode was yet aother injected ad for…

Cool Zone Media podcasts kinda famously get farmed ads that run counter to their content. they claim they do what they can to influence that (ahem... Washington State Highway Patrol and all the gold scams come to mind) but i wonder if signing their souls away to ihm removed a lot of their agency in that regard.

and if you've ever listened to one of Robert's (CZM executive producer and host of some of their flagships) other podcasts you might understand why companies don't want him doing ad reads.

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

#269
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

[deleted]

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

#270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also doesn’t help that so many creators - even legitimate ones - now use injected ads that they don’t verify at all. I remember listening to an episode of Better Offline a buddy sent me and anyone who knows about Ed knows that basically half his crusade is against bad AI implementation/“slop”/etc. He’s broadly against the current LLM rush. First ad when I fired up the podcast episode was yet aother injected ad for…

where are the ads injected? I use a couple of podcast "apps" and neither inject ads, all ads in podcasts are explicitly put into the audio file by the people making the podcast, even pre-roll and post-roll ads.

> all ads in podcasts are explicitly put into the audio file by the people making the podcast

Yes, but those are dynamic too: if you go back and download old episodes, for example, you'll get the current run of ads.

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