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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

#371

Post by panstromek »

dredmorbius wrote: post #330
panstromek wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand the point of that first nitpick, this is an algorithm, at least in the normie sense of the word as a ranking system for list of posts. > A small amount of early activity (upvotes, flags, comments) tends to have an outsized effect This is exactly the problem. > what you're seeing is simple mass-media power-law effects I would challenge that point. Power law comes from some feedback loop, which is pa…

In the context of social media, or more generally, user-submitted and user-generated content , which would subsume HN, "algorithm" is virtually always shorthand for algorithmic amplification , with an end-goal of increasing time-on-site, engagement, addiction, outrage, and similar measures. And that is what HN explicitly does not have. https://knightcolumbia.org/content/the-myth-of-the-algorithm... > To the extent th…

Honestly, I think this is quite naive view of the problem. The negative properties are emergent and emerge from even the simplest rules you can think of. Sort something by likes and you create feedback loop that incentivises attention seeking behaviour.

HN of course have all of these problems, just look at what we're doing now. It's in some ways better and some ways worse than others.

It's trendy these days to blame the algorithm or social media companies, but these problems are way more fundamental. Thinking that this platform and even you yourself is somehow immune to this is delusional.

> an end-goal of increasing time-on-site, engagement, addiction, outrage, and similar measures

Yea, again, this is naive oversimplification that's just been popular recently, but those are not endgoals and often go against platform goals. Outraged users don't click ads and increase revenue, they cause problems, drive other people away from the platform, same is true for the other issues.

As somebody who's been working on a social media platform for 7 years, I just can't hear this stuff anymore. Those problems exist, they are hard and much deeper and more difficult to solve than most people think.

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

#372

Post by chrisjj »

lupusreal wrote: post #70
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…

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.

> The ad industry likes to say that their industry is clean and the people who buy ads for scams are the problem

Hmm. How are these people not part of the industry exactly?

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

#373

Post by chrisjj »

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…

> 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".

As if people read only reuptable sites ...

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

#374

Post by npodbielski »

rkomorn wrote: post #57
npodbielski wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are putting comments on HN right now. i guess not entirelly useless then?

OP wrote "almost useless" which, by definition, is also "not entirely useless".

You are technically correct, best kind of correct.

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

#375

Post by thesuitonym »

jerf wrote: post #255
thesuitonym wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Hacker News does not advertise because it is a gigantic advertisement for YCombinator. This is not some sort of scurrilous accusation, they may not be constantly banging the table about it but it's not a secret.

I understand that, but the point is a good product spreads naturally.

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

#376

Post by fluoridation »

liampulles wrote: post #370
fluoridation wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>my assumption is that you want to read my article, and not to be distracted by whatever performance is happening in the comment section Pfft. Half of the fun on the Internet is arguing with people about what other people said. I like to link to this blog post with over 500 replies about a constructivist who doesn't believe in the well-definedness of real numbers and shows up in the comments to respond to people: htt…

I'm not in any way stopping you from having half your fun there, be my guest. I personally find internet arguments to be a waste of time most of the time, but the internet is wide enough to accommodate both camps. I propose to you that you should be in favor of a diverse internet, that is blogs that have comments sections, blogs that have likes, blogs that have neither, and blogs that do something else. That is proba…

>I'm not in any way stopping you from having half your fun there

I mean, you are. You are adding friction to the process. If someone wants to talk about a post of yours they have find some forum where it would be relevant and link to it. I don't know what it looks like on your end. Maybe adding the ability to comment would be more effort than you think is worthwhile, but if it was as simple as a checkbox, you would still leave it turned off, am I wrong?

>I personally find internet arguments to be a waste of time most of the time

Of course it's a waste of time. So is blogging, as well as many other activities humans engage in.

>I propose to you that you should be in favor of a diverse internet

I'm naturally going to be for an Internet that accommodates the things I want to do, against one that doesn't (when it could), and indifferent about one that accommodates things I'm not interested in. I don't know what your blog is, so I don't want to comment on it, so I'm indifferent whether it gives readers the ability to comment, so I don't particularly care to try to convince you do anything.

But, I have felt that tiny bit of frustration when I read or watched something and scrolled down to see what people said about it and saw there was no comment section, either by design or omission. Sometimes that has been enough to disengage me from the thing in question.

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

#377

Post by fknorangesite »

tcfhgj wrote: post #287
fknorangesite wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My dude, Hacker News is the ad. This forum doesn't exist to get you to comment on news stories; it exists to attract tech people to YC.

Hacker News is as much an ad as a good product producing a happy customer

I think we're converging on "loss leader."

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

#378

Post by fragmede »

kbelder wrote: post #286
ryandrake wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At one point a few months ago, YouTube seems to have gotten the idea that I have some kind of bowel problem, and I'd constantly get ads about my "stuck poop." WTF? I'm watching a woodworking tutorial, I don't want to fucking hear about poop! Total bottom of the barrel.

Several months ago, my wife bought several bottles of pureed pumpkin babyfood, because small amounts added to catfood can treat some feline stomach issues. Now, we're getting diaper commercials all over youtube. I assume we're flagged in some database as likely having a new child, but you can't ever know for sure.

https://myadcenter.google.com/personalizationoff

You can look up your Google ad profile and see if "pregnant" is one of your account's attributes. Facebook has a similar page somewhere.

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

#379

Post by genewitch »

fknorangesite wrote: post #270
genewitch wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No, that's incorrect. Not one of the podcasts i listen to re-master their mp3s, the checksums stay the same. In fact, most of the podcasts i listen to have no ads at all. I wonder if there's some misunderstanding, here. If i go watch like an LTT video where they had a sponser, 5 years ago, that same "native ad" will be in the video. I'm specifically saying that the podcast apps i use do not inject ads, but podcasts themselves will do native advertising, i consider these completely different things.

https://podcastindex.org/apps podcasting 2.0 app index.

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

#380

Post by asdfwaafsfw »

secondcoming wrote: post #130
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.

Websites get to control what ads are displayed. If a website integrates with Taboola they're explixitly opting in to these crap ads.

random question for you - do you still have your Dave Bull Great Wave and would you sell it?
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