I keep using isso https://isso-comments.de/
I installed it on my static blog very easily, and I own all the data.
Also it is GDPR-compliant (because it provide hints on how to remove data like IPs) and it is very light.
For me Disqus and similia are a dead end.
I’ve removed Disqus. It was making my blog worse
41–50 of 408 posts
Re: I’ve removed Disqus. It was making my blog worse
#42For everyone saying "just have the comments on social networking sites" - that fragments the conversation, makes people sign up to a service if they want to comment, and exposes them to ads on 3rd party sites.
You also get no control over the level of abuse, misinformation, and spam on those external sites.
The joy of having comments on your own site is that you can moderate the bad-faith discussions and curate a friendly / helpful atmosphere.
Yes, you need a small database to receive and serve comments. Spam is mostly taken care of with a hidden field. It is great to build a community of commenters who want to offer their thoughts.
Re: I’ve removed Disqus. It was making my blog worse
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
I suppose it's rather the "without maintenance" part. Had everyone updated their WordPress sites the problem would've been much less.
The wordpress core can be kept up to date but the vulnerabilities from plugins, relying on fixes and updating plugins i think was more the problem than the core. In the 2010s if you left a wordpress blog unattended even with the official default filter plugin it would fill with spam comments. I dont know if thats still a problem.
My own blog - which gets maybe a couple of posts a year these days, and almost no audience - had 59 spam comments so far today. It really is time I turned off comments.
Re: I’ve removed Disqus. It was making my blog worse
#44I use Hyvor Talk - https://talk.hyvor.com - for ad-free and privacy respecting commenting on my blog. I really wanted something that I can just use as a service, not host anything myself. But it's quite expensive. If I where to ditch it to save the money, I'd look into integrating Mastodon into the page, I saw somewhere that they used Mastodon as their comment system (it's basically a thread on Mastodon that is embed…
12€/month minimum, that's expensive. It's ok for a professional website with loads of comments but for my personal blog, I'd rather not have comments.
Re: I’ve removed Disqus. It was making my blog worse
#45Disqus has been dead for years. Haven't seen it used on a legitimate blog or news sites since it was bought out. This was kinda expected. It's the Digg rot at work.
Re: I’ve removed Disqus. It was making my blog worse
#46Edit: And for other similar services, blocking ads or using DNS solution that block ads it will refuse to load the comment section.
It is now 2025, Unless it is an extremely popular site where every blog post has hundreds of comments. For most blogs hosting your own comment section shouldn't even be a rounding error or expensive. Why do we still have to put up with Disqus?
Blog like Michael Tsai [1] do it just fine. You submit a comment it render the page on server.
[1]https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/09/29/ios-26-0-1-and-ipados-26-...
Re: I’ve removed Disqus. It was making my blog worse
#47Utterances: https://utteranc.es/
That requires a GitHub account, which most readers on most blogs won't have. Moreover, I'm pretty sure most people (>50%) who would have commented, probably won't do it if it requires creating an account for an external service first.
Maybe anonymous commenting by just solving some captcha is impossible nowadays because in practice all captchas get broken by spam bots immediately. Or maybe not. I would like to see evidence for that first before giving up and choosing a commenting solution which strictly requires an account.
Re: I’ve removed Disqus. It was making my blog worse
#48I blocked Disqus locally on my computer via /etc/hosts many years ago. Reason is very simply. Because comments as genre is almost useless.
> comments as genre is almost useless.
Writing a comment that categorizes comments as a literary genre and then immediately argues that comments are useless is some meta level deconstruction. Kudos.
Re: I’ve removed Disqus. It was making my blog worse
#49I think the concern of "blog comments" is best left to external platforms eg HN, Reddit etc What would be more useful would be an automated list of places where the post has been discussed (and maybe pull the top comments from there through API?)
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…
> Also, the author’s experience with seeing scammy ads on their site doesn’t mean that others are seeing the same ads...
Well, so they may see worse ads.
Re: I’ve removed Disqus. It was making my blog worse
#50It's disgusting what the internet has become, in this case it's even more egregious that the author as far as I see isn't even making any commission off of these ads, not that that would justify it. And then you have companies like Google who will punish you intentionally for using tools to reduce the amount of spam you're exposed to on your own device.
We need a better model of financially supporting websites and services, not all companies are simply greedy, there are bills to pay, but it's gotten ridiculous.