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 service currently in operation through out the web.
When I forget to sign in to YouTube, I see the same pattern, shitty ads that are clearly only allowed because otherwise YouTube wouldn't have sufficient ad inventory to meet their internal KPIs.
duxup 5 hours ago [-]
The YouTube situation is weird. YouTube is competent platform, and has some good content on it.
Meanwhile when I watch YouTube I get a stream of: "5G blocking beanies", highly questionable medical products, gross out ads about poo and etc ...
It really degrades my view of YouTube / Google.
ToDougie 4 hours ago [-]
Do you have watch history off? I have never experienced anything like this, but I pay for Premium.
duxup 4 hours ago [-]
Yes, I have watch history turned off. I suspect that gets me a different selection of ads.
hnuser123456 3 hours ago [-]
Maybe it's a dark pattern to punish you for turning off personalization.
duxup 2 hours ago [-]
It seems plausible that if they can’t tie it to the user they have a batch of “garbage ads” that just run, cheap stuff that the worst kind of folks pay for.
flowerthoughts 4 hours ago [-]
I've been receiving email spam from Derilla, a pillow company, for many years. Once the manifest V3 abomination went into effect in Chrome, I also have to endure it on the frontpage of YouTube.
Who buys pillows because of email spam and YouTube ads? I don't get it. It's probably not a scam, but a very obnoxious company nonetheless.
6 hours ago [-]
dathinab 8 hours ago [-]
> Certainly not enough to fund all the ad supported service currently in operation through out the web.
I'm not fully sure about this, an ad network which does that very reliably can probably charge the ad provisioning companies extra due to it being on more high quality sides/locations and pay out extra little due to having "high quality low disturbing" ads.
But with the Google being a quasi monopoly for ad networks on any open platform and most people either blocking all adds or no adds there is just little room for alternatives. I do use uBlock Origin for some custom filters, but I which instead of "on" / "of" there where "on but more like privacy badger" / "on full" / "off" with the first being the default so that users can create an insensitive for better ad handling.
lupusreal 12 hours ago [-]
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.
mort96 10 hours ago [-]
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 but you can't expect them to successfully weed out every single bad ad".
The reality is, of course, that Google and its ilk doesn't give a single rat's ass about people falling from scams or getting infected by malware. Scams and malware pays better than "ethical" ads (to the degree that such a thing exists). It's a travesty that there are apparently no laws against their behavior.
PaulHoule 6 hours ago [-]
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.
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.
tracker1 2 hours ago [-]
It'd be relatively easy for Google to screen out and filter ads... Charge enough when creating an account or starting/changing a campaign. Then you can pay staff for manual review. They could charge $1000 for account creation (half of which you get back after the first year), then they charge even $20 at campaign creation/change... They can even provide context/feedback, "Sorry, but this seems misleading, doesn't relate to what you are linking, is scammy, etc." And have an additional "check" of each ad and target after a day, a week and a random point within each month. Charge an additional minimum of $20/mo per ad for (re)validation.
For the bulk of legit advertisers, this won't affect the bottom line of a given campaign and will keep out the scammers, etc. Leading to a much higher quality ecosystem. It would also give Google the potential for a higher percentage share of profits in the system. It would also likely reduce the CPM pricing though, possibly to a larger extent than profits from the validation system itself.
But it would be a much healthier overall system.
hnlmorg 10 hours ago [-]
> It's a travesty that there are apparently no laws against their behavior.
there is in the UK. And likely in most other jurisdictions too. But it's about penalizing the advertisers rather than the platform. Which clearly neither works at scale nor across borders.
This definitely feels like a better use case for an "online safety act" -- but instead we got censorship laws....
ToucanLoucan 8 hours ago [-]
Because scams are a threat to the serfs, and people spreading the truth about global events and issues is a threat to the powerful. That's why I really don't bag on "slacktivists" anymore. I'm not saying there isn't SOME truth to the notion that people reliably pick the one kind of activism that doesn't require getting off the sofa, it's a fair critique. However even that kind of activism is now heavily policed around the humanitarian crisis that won't be named.
If it wasn't a threat, they wouldn't police it so hard.
jrmg 10 hours ago [-]
It's a travesty that there are apparently no laws against their behavior.
In the USA I’m pretty sure advertising scams - even the more ‘benign’ ones like claiming a product does something it doesn’t do or lying about its efficiency - are illegal. There’s just no - or not nearly enough - enforcement.
There's no meaningful difference in my mind between "there are no laws" and "there are technically laws but they're completely unenforced".
RajT88 9 hours ago [-]
There's a lot of that going around in the US these days.
mort96 9 hours ago [-]
And everywhere else, honestly. It's not like banner ads on the web are particularly honest here in the EU/EEA.
RajT88 8 hours ago [-]
I was referring specifically to, "laws not being enforced".
mort96 7 hours ago [-]
Both the EU and various EU/EEA members have laws related to misleading advertising on the books which seemingly aren't being enforced either.
miltonlost 9 hours ago [-]
*no enforcement any longer. Back when we had Lina Khan at the FTC, she would have enforced it. Now we have a scammer-in-chief only enforcing laws against his political opponents
pavon 7 hours ago [-]
She started enforcing it against the most egregious offenders, but for every enforcement action, there were thousands that went unpunished. The problem is that FTC proceedings are very process heavy by design, which is what you want in some cases, but doesn't scale to widespread scam. We need to be prosecuting hundreds of thousands these cases every year if we want to make a dent and turn things around to fraud being a rare exception rather than a normal business model.
jrmg 9 hours ago [-]
I agree the current administration is way worse than the previous one in almost every respect, but to argue that the previous one would’ve enforced this particular thing is obviously untrue.
The situation’s been like this for a few years now.
If she had had more time, I could see Khan going after fake ads as well. There's nothing to me that suggests that she was deliberately ignoring fraudulent ads when she was extremely pro-consumer in nearly every other policy.
jrmg 8 hours ago [-]
Agreed - I think it’s lack of resources. Congress would need to act to fix this.
kevin_thibedeau 10 hours ago [-]
Google Tag Manager is a malware vector. It's very design is to distribute non-Google code through a supposedly trusted source. They are part of the problem and JS blocking is the only dependable safeguard.
While it has gotten around the "logical fallacy community", for lack of a better term, in the last few years, it could still stand to be known by more people. It's become very popular. I think there are many who have subconsciously picked it up as just how things are done.
detourdog 8 hours ago [-]
My mail server easily gets the most phishing attempts from gmail. This is due to my unwillingness to blacklist Gmail. I report the abuse through there abuse page. The results in a slowdown while the abuser reformulates their sending process. I know this by watching the changes to the sending path in the header of the phishing attempts. The content and subject often don’t change but the header does.
mort96 8 hours ago [-]
I bet that if you were using gmail, those phishing mails would end up in your trash ... which raises the question: why does Google allow people who Google's own spam-filter can detect are sending 99% spam to keep sending e-mail?
snailmailman 2 hours ago [-]
When google switched off uBlock origin, it took less than a week for my grandmother to call me in a panic because she clicked on a malicious Facebook ad.
Google disabled the Adblock, Facebook let the ad run on their site, and Microsoft hosted the malicious site on their cloud provider. Shoutout to Microsoft for taking the site down within the hour after I reported it- more than I can say for any of the blatantly illegal or scam ads I’ve seen on YouTube. but still, 3 big tech companies that could have definitely stopped this is they really wanted to.
lelanthran 25 minutes ago [-]
> When google switched off uBlock origin, it took less than a week for my grandmother to call me in a panic because she clicked on a malicious Facebook ad.
What did your grandmother need Chrome for? You couldn't find the 5m it would take to set her up with Firefox?
tbrownaw 10 hours ago [-]
> 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".
But I don't care* about that, I care that they're visually obnoxious and sometimes slow.
* Well, usually. Way back when, there used to be occasional news about browser sandbox escapes.
mort96 9 hours ago [-]
I agree, I would be using an ad blocker even if all the ads were "only" annoying attempts at manipulating my behavior rather than scams and malware. But pointing out that ads can damage your computer or scam you out of money or information is a stronger pro-ad-blocking argument.
bradlys 7 hours ago [-]
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.
cm2012 5 hours ago [-]
IG, TikTok, Meta have a lot of data they can use to do good ad targeting that is harder to apply to Google/iOS apps. Also has to do with the ad format, placement, etc.
bradlys 3 hours ago [-]
I get that but I’m surprised that Google doesn’t have that info too. Google’s ad biz is bigger than Meta’s.
jrmg 10 hours ago [-]
For me, almost every YouTube ad is a scam.
Medical supplements or plans that make claims that clearly aren’t real, financial scams (crypto or get-rich-quick schemes), or product scams (this new device that ‘they’ don’t want you to know about can heat/cool your house in minutes for pennies!).
I’m pretty sure none of this is legal, and Google obviously doesn’t care.
FWIW I have ad personalization off - perhaps it’s a bit better for those who don’t?
chamomeal 10 hours ago [-]
I used to get SO MANY “heres how I make $6,000/day in passive income with chatGPT”. I reported am all, I know it never did anything
yifanl 10 hours ago [-]
I wonder if reporting them gives them more engagement, since that would mean you watched it and paid enough attention.
1-more 5 hours ago [-]
From when I worked in the video ad industry, the industry standard was that an impression was binary and seeing a single frame of the ad counted. IDK if YouTube follows the Interactive Advertising Bureau guidelines, but they probably do. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/xandr/industry-reference/i...
svieira 10 hours ago [-]
Quite a bit - I get ads for septic tanks because I have looked at them several times and tank companies continue to advertise for me because I might buy. I get ads for robot mowers because, again, I looked at them. I still see "the bottom of the barrel" ads occasionally, but it's very rare. Ad blitzes on the other hand ... (no, I don't want to build an app just-by-thinking-about-it) ...
ryandrake 7 hours ago [-]
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.
kbelder 5 hours ago [-]
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.
5 hours ago [-]
Intermernet 10 hours ago [-]
Just remember, advertising is responsible for the rage economy. It's responsible for platforming misinformation. It's responsible for screen-addiction in children. It's responsible for online scams. Just think of all of the proposed laws and regulations around the world that are trying to counter each of these problems and remember that the root cause, and enabler of all of them is advertising. It's truly an amplifier of enshittification, and one of the worst conduits of bad social behaviour ever invented. If you're in the ad / ad-tech industry, please seriously consider the effect you're having on the world.
I'm happy to pay for media, news, social networks etc. I don't purchase things based on anything other than personal recommendations and research. I have no use for advertising, and I have no desire or need for ad-supported platforms. I'm pretty sure I'm not alone. People say advertising works, and that justifies it. The thing is, advertising only works on enough people to justify it. Everyone else hates it with a passion, or studiously avoids it. I'm not sure if we're a majority or a minority, it doesn't matter, but we suffer advertising and wish it were gone.
Advertising needs to change. It would be nice if it just went away, but realistically that's not going to happen. It needs to be recognised as harmful and regulated as a harmful product.
We've known that advertising is "filling the world with bile and garbage" for decades.
mrweasel 11 hours ago [-]
That's a really good point. If the problem is the scammers, and they buy ads, then why won't they let us report it?
rchaud 8 hours ago [-]
Because they don't want to drive off business.
ghurtado 6 hours ago [-]
> The ad industry likes to say that their industry is clean
First I've ever heard this, and I have been working in marketing all my life.
What exactly do you mean by this? Where have you heard it?
DelightOne 10 hours ago [-]
I bet they tried an llm scam detector. It was too good so they didn't put it into production.
genewitch 9 hours ago [-]
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.
kbelder 5 hours ago [-]
Well, that code would be over 95% accurate.
lupusreal 6 hours ago [-]
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.
BolexNOLA 10 hours ago [-]
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 yet another AI agent company as generic as the rest. Literally the organizations he’s railing against and calling wasteful. It was clearly because he handed off the advertising to one of these injection services.
Sidebar: these ads tend to perform terribly. Actual ad reads by the host(s) are the only thing that lead to meaningful conversions in podcasts.
rchaud 8 hours ago [-]
If they post the episode on Youtube, download an audio stream of that file instead. No ads injected there.
genewitch 9 hours ago [-]
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.
fknorangesite 6 hours ago [-]
> 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.
BolexNOLA 9 hours ago [-]
That’s a (good) choice by the shows you listen to. There are plenty of ad injection services for podcasting, pretty sure Acast (popular hosting service) has it built in for instance. Search “DAI podcast” or “dynamic ad insertion podcast.”
The biggest giveaway is when the ads are dropped in the middle of someone talking. Pretty much any hits that are manually added are led into by the hosts if it’s mid-show.
GuinansEyebrows 6 hours ago [-]
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.
BolexNOLA 5 hours ago [-]
What an un-fun reputation to have!
I’m not even against pre-recorded spots by whoever the sponsor is if that’s his deal though the conversion rate on those are not as good. It’s just the completely random ads that the podcaster(s) don’t even know are playing on their show. The entire reason advertising on podcasting was more effective in the 2010s and early 2020s was because there was a little more trust with their listeners, there’s a relationship at play even if it’s parasocial. If they were actively reading on air, I assumed that they vetted the company and it at least passed the smell test (though plenty sure didn’t, I would say the bar was a little higher than other media formats).
secondcoming 10 hours ago [-]
Websites get to control what ads are displayed. If a website integrates with Taboola they're explixitly opting in to these crap ads.
conradfr 10 hours ago [-]
It doesn't work for adsense as they basically get a new account every day so you can't effectively block scams.
edoceo 8 hours ago [-]
Google can't figure out rate-limiting and trust-leveling/ramp?
Sure they can; it just slows the money-pipe
conradfr 1 hours ago [-]
Google could but I was responding to "the website that integrates ads can".
hnlmorg 10 hours ago [-]
What's YouTube's excuse?
secondcoming 10 hours ago [-]
They allow them, and people who have ad personalisation disabled are probably seeing more of them
hnlmorg 10 hours ago [-]
Yes, but YT obviously doesn't use Taboola and it's still infested with scam ads.
micromacrofoot 2 hours ago [-]
there's not much difference between an ad that's a scam and an ad that's not, so many networks don't bother policing it much
tcfhgj 12 hours ago [-]
almost every ad is a scam, telling lies directly or indirectly maximizing what is within the legal bounds.
spcebar 8 hours ago [-]
Having worked in the world of e-commerce, there are genuinely good companies run by good people making genuinely good products that no one knows about, and one of the ways they try and get people to know about their products is advertising. In one case, this is a product that replaced something already in your home, it's materially better, and it's materially cheaper in the long term. How do you create an ad for that that doesn't sound like a lie?
wizzwizz4 8 hours ago [-]
You have a curated directory of actually decent stuff, and you list the item there. Don't wrestle with the pigs.
Matticus_Rex 8 hours ago [-]
What do you do with the other two wishes from the genie?
dylan604 8 hours ago [-]
Whirled Peas could be one of them
dylan604 8 hours ago [-]
And how do you get people to view said directory if they've never heard of it?
thesuitonym 8 hours ago [-]
Consider that Hacker News does not advertise, and yet somehow you are here.
jerf 7 hours ago [-]
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.
dylan604 7 hours ago [-]
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.
tcfhgj 7 hours ago [-]
Plenty companies don't advertise by shoving unwanted ads in people's faces.
dylan604 6 hours ago [-]
There are plenty of companies I haven't heard of. QED
tcfhgj 5 hours ago [-]
and yet they survive somehow
nickff 5 hours ago [-]
Many of them don't. Consider that BMW famously didn't run ads for most of its history... but now it does.
tcfhgj 4 hours ago [-]
Many doing ads don't.
fknorangesite 6 hours ago [-]
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.
tcfhgj 5 hours ago [-]
Hacker News is as much an ad as a good product producing a happy customer
lupusreal 6 hours ago [-]
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.
zahlman 5 hours ago [-]
And how do you establish trust to curate it?
D13Fd 11 hours ago [-]
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.
ants_everywhere 9 hours ago [-]
It's legal to advertise real products or services that will take your money and leave you with essentially nothing.
For example:
- gambling, e.g. slot machines, sports betting
- healing crystals
- palm readings
- carnival games
Perhaps the right distinction is whether something is legally a fraud or not. But I kind of agree that most ads are scams and also that ad networks don't have the ability to separate legal scams from fraud. So I just block them all.
rchaud 8 hours ago [-]
Yes, these scams have aleays been there. The distinction was that advertisers like newspapers and magazines had a standards body that would reject ad placements that were insulting to their audience's intelligence.
timeinput 5 hours ago [-]
I know television is not newspapers and magazines, but they at least had to have some level of standards bodies (I'm fairly sure they at least did in the early 90s), and I remember Psychic Friends Network ads on tv which is clearly in the realm of palm readings. I guess maybe it wasn't insulting to the intelligence of people watching late night TV in the early 90s?
tetris11 11 hours ago [-]
I think the poster is lamenting the general quality of all advertised products in general. If it's a brand of good quality (Miele, Henry, DeLonghi) it probably does not need to be advertised, as word of mouth and price point is generally enough.
gruez 10 hours ago [-]
>If it's a brand of good quality (Miele, Henry, DeLonghi) it probably does not need to be advertised, as word of mouth and price point is generally enough.
what about iPhones? They're ubiquitous enough that Apple probably doesn't need ads to let people know they exist, yet every at launch ads for them are plastered everywhere. Same with soft drinks and cars, just to name a few. Before you say "iPhone sucks", the same can be said for basically all other phone OEMs, and if your theory allows categorizing an entire industry as crap, your theory is basically unfalsifiable.
inetknght 10 hours ago [-]
> if your theory allows categorizing an entire industry as crap, your theory is basically unfalsifiable
Or maybe, just maybe, the entire industry is crap and so many people are complicit such that it becomes a self-sustaining problem.
gruez 10 hours ago [-]
>and so many people are complicit such that it becomes a self-sustaining problem.
If you're defining "ads" to be a "problem", then it turns the statement into a meaningless tautology. Only crappy brand use ads, because brands that use ads are crappy.
ghaff 9 hours ago [-]
In the case of iPhones specifically--which I see a lot more ads for than appliances--people do upgrade phones a lot more frequently than appliances, especially major ones, often for specific capabilities like cameras. So reminding people they don't have the latest and greatest makes a lot of business sense.
bloak 10 hours ago [-]
I would guess that a company like Apple (or Miele or whatever) pays some attention to the context in which their advertisements appear. I don't think they'd want an advertisement for iPhone to appear online with a weight loss pill on the left and a gambling site on the right.
spcebar 8 hours ago [-]
I should start by saying that I find ads incredibly irritating in any form. That said, Miele and DeLonghi are both more than a hundred year old companies. Maybe they don't need to advertise because they have such solidly establish brand identities, but they do advertise and they have advertised throughout their history as companies. Ads are a way of maintaining brand awareness, introducing new products, and creating demand. Even if you have an incredibly solid product with good word of mouth there is still benefit to advertising it.
dylan604 8 hours ago [-]
Two of the three names are unknown to me. This word of mouth delivery did nothing to make me interested in any of the three though. I have no idea what any of them actually do. I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader as how best to internet search "Henry".
Tsiklon 6 hours ago [-]
All 3 are appliance manufacturers. Miele and Henry are predominantly vacuum cleaner brands.
Henry hoovers are ubiquitous in the professional market in the UK and well regarded for durability, performance and the cute face all their cleaners have. Essentially anyone in the UK will have used, or seen one be used
fifteen1506 10 hours ago [-]
Maybe. Stealing ad space from a competitor may be in itself valuable.
Another metric comes to my mind: if a newcomer has money to spend on ads, then it's a stable firm.
I'm sure there are more.
dylan604 8 hours ago [-]
This is something people don't credit enough. How many times have you search for something by name and received a direct competitor's product as top result? This is why I put no stock in digital ads for the little guy. The bigger guy will always have a larger ad buy budget and will outbid you at every turn.
sofixa 10 hours ago [-]
> If it's a brand of good quality (Miele, Henry, DeLonghi) it probably does not need to be advertised, as word of mouth and price point is generally enough.
Nah, they advertise (probably) for a similar reason as car brands do, to make the people who bought it already feel better and more reassured about their choice.
I'm guessing high-end appliance brands are enough of a niche market that it just doesn't make sense for them to advertise in relatively unfocused ways. You'll see plenty of ads for high-end appliances and cookware if you frequent gourmet-oriented websites and magazines.
godshatter 7 hours ago [-]
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.
63stack 11 hours ago [-]
Yes there is a massive difference, you are correct. Also, most of the ads do not fall into that category.
potato3732842 11 hours ago [-]
I remember back in the good old days (so like 2008) you'd visit the some bigco website looking for specs on some item and then later you'd see their products in your banner ads. Times were so simple back then.
tcfhgj 10 hours ago [-]
I agree there exist many shades of grey
fifteen1506 10 hours ago [-]
50, actually.
saghm 9 hours ago [-]
There could be more! The title doesn't specify they're the only ones.
dylan604 8 hours ago [-]
Right, the title also doesn't state the bit depth the color values are stored. There could be 64, 128, 256, 1024, 64million shades. Data Inadequate. I'm really surprised this was missed on this forum!
BizarroLand 7 hours ago [-]
Seems like the ethical way to have ads on your site is to do it the way Costco does.
Costco has an entire section of affiliate links to manufacturers they have worked with. The people who go there get special discounts on the products purchased from those manufacturers, and the only ads you get about it are on Costco's site reminding you that this section exists.
Websites could easily add a "shop" page to their sites and screen and curate a selection of companies willing to pay an affiliate link bonus to the site when users purchase through those links.
This would help them generate income while also not enshittifying the site or experience for users.
cm2012 5 hours ago [-]
This is the other side of ad tracking. Good ad tracking means much more relevant ads. The only advertisers that can afford to run on untargeted ad inventory are lowest common denominator products like teeth whitening and weight loss.
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.
JaggedJax 6 hours ago [-]
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.
beej71 4 hours ago [-]
I also went this route. Also like it.
huijzer 13 hours ago [-]
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.
Can't wait for the time when everyone is running an LLM on their phone so you can ask them to write their own rebuttals as well.
snthd 11 hours ago [-]
Data protection by design and by default.
accrual 5 hours ago [-]
This is hilarious, I love it. I've thought about rolling my own comment system for a blog and thought it'd be fun to have a local LLM decide if I should even see the comment to approve/deny or not. Could be fun to browse the rejected comments periodically.
magicmicah85 9 hours ago [-]
This is so evil. I love it.
tgv 10 hours ago [-]
Local storage gets erased at some point. Perhaps it takes so long that nobody notices.
dspillett 8 hours ago [-]
It will last long enough for even the more determined keyboard warriors to get bored of arguing with themselves and typing in all caps YOU DON'T EVEN CARE DO YOU or similar…
TBH, I have considered writing a version (this isn't my work at all, yet) that does submit the blathering server-side so it looks like there is a useful round trip, but:
* I have more important projects awaiting the much fabled arrival of Free Time!
* While it could potentially keep an idiot “happy” longer, I'd have to mess around with some sort of login system to give the right people the right comments back, it couldn't rely on a just session ID as that would be as volatile as the comments in local storage.
* Taking in the data gives the possibility of DoS by extra routes.
* Giving back the data gives the possibility of the comments being abused as a Heath-Robinson-esk storage device!
drdrek 11 hours ago [-]
I Love this!
prmoustache 10 hours ago [-]
This is awesome!
navigate8310 9 hours ago [-]
This is so funny and genius
codazoda 11 hours ago [-]
I use HN a fair amount. I often post articles here but I also feel bad about doing it because 1 or 2 upvotes makes me feel like maybe it doesn't belong. I think it might be good to cross post everything here and link to the HN comments for discussion. Is this frowned on at all? I always worry I'll get shadow banned or something for my 100 low vote posts. Here's the rule I worry about:
> Please don't use HN primarily for promotion. It's ok to post your own stuff part of the time, but the primary use of the site should be for curiosity.
panstromek 10 hours ago [-]
> 1 or 2 upvotes makes me feel like maybe it doesn't belong.
This is more or less artifact of HN algorithm, it's common to get single digit votes for majority of your posts. Whether something blows up feel almost random, you have to get pretty lucky to hit a time window when there's not that many posts or a lot of people look at new page and upvote the post at the same time to make it snowball. Many links are posted multiple times with no traction and then they suddenly blow up on 4th attempt.
dredmorbius 10 hours ago [-]
s/algorithm/dynamic/
HN doesn't have an algorithm, per se.
There are voting mechanics, and some sites gain or lose a penalty based on content or type (most generic news sites, for example, are slightly penalised). There are keyword / topic penalties too for issues that are dominating the hivemind for a period.
But mostly what you're seeing is simple mass-media power-law effects, along with early-action advantage:
- Votes / article tend to follow a power-law curve, where the frequency of high votes is inversely related to the vote. This typically shows as a linear relation when the log of both values is taken (log(frequency) vs. log(votes)). There are 30 front-page slots on HN, about 11,000 opportunities per year (at day's end, more if you count intra-day appearances), vs. about 400,000 submissions (see: <https://whaly.io/posts/hacker-news-2021-retrospective>). Most submissions won't make the grade, often through no fault of their own. I've looked into this in some detail, including looking at votes/comments by story position (there's a sharp decrease here as well).
- A small amount of early activity (upvotes, flags, comments) tends to have an outsized effect on the trajectory of a given story. Low-quality comments are particularly deleterious, and are hunted aggressively by mods for this reason.
- Stories often do far better on a subsequent submission. Part of this is probably randomness, part also a familiarity effect among those reviewing the "New" queue. If at first you don't succeed ... try again, a few times, at least.
- Stories can get selected (or nominated for) the Second Chance or Invited pools. These increase odds of landing higher on the front page, and are used fairly frequently. See "pool" <https://news.ycombinator.com/pool> and "invited" <https://news.ycombinator.com/invited> under "lists".
panstromek 3 hours ago [-]
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 partially from network effects but it can be massively amplified by the system, which is exactly what HN does. Not only it bakes the power law directly into the score eqaution, but it also shows the list sorted by score by default, which creates a positive feedback loop on votes.
Actually I'm a bit perplexed that it works this well, HN algorithm was one of the first that I implemented on our site and it was quite terrible even after a lot of tuning. I feel like it must be tuned for some volume of posts and people, otherwise it doesn't make much sense to me.
dredmorbius 2 hours ago [-]
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.
To the extent that HN does utilise specific procedural mechanisms to adjust the priority of content, it's virtually always away from the typical patterns of algorithmic amplification: less emotion, less outrage, fewer hot takes, less nationalism and relgious flamewars, and specifically toward "intellectual curiosity and thoughtful conversation": <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13108404>.
It would be possible, yes, though incredibly disingenuous, to argue that what HN is doing is itself amplification. Yes, any curation is an amplification of some content over other, but in a world where "algorithmic content" means clickbait, brain-crack, and stickyness, HN is quite clearly aiming for something else.
If power-law dynamics were purely the result of manipulative algorithmic amplification, we'd see them only in online media subject to such amplification. And that's simply not the case. Power laws are fundamental to not only all of human communications and interactions (word and letter frequencies, for example, neither of which suggest a strong influence by algorithmic amplification), but to all manner of natural phenomena, including those entirely outside the realm of biological activity (e.g., frequency/magnitude plots of earthquakes, volcanoes, asteroid impacts, and stellar novae).
And in the realm of interpersonal online communications, HN's goals and interventions (mods, voting, and some programmed mechanisms) are desperately trying to swim upstream. As someone whose online tenure pre-dates the Web and extends to pre-Eternal September Usenet, HN has done remarkably well, and outlived many of its antecedents' and competitors' useful or entire lives (Usenet, Slashdot, Digg, Reddit, Google+, et cetera). Trust me, I'd love to see it do better (a view often voiced by mods as well). But in an ordinal ranking with what actually exists it's an exemplar.
This isn't a nitpick, it's a core and central point with (literally) universal applicability.
Angostura 10 hours ago [-]
BlueSky's ability to let you embed a widget and point it to a discussion seems attractive.
chistev 12 hours ago [-]
Yea, it's what modern blogs do. The discussions happen on social media and platforms where they are shared
notRobot 12 hours ago [-]
This has disadvantages though! Often the threads on sites like HN/reddit get "archived" or lose traction and you cannot join the discussion if you don't happen to discover the article in the first few days of it getting published.
In blogs people can come along anytime and use comments to add additional information/context/perspectives, point out misunderstandings or outdated information, share updates, pose questions and start interesting conversations that do not have an expiration date on them.
The discussion for the article can be found on the same webpage by readers, they don't have to go looking on external sites, most of which have terrible searchability and now require logins just to view content and can delete threads and valuable discussions arbitrarily.
I just realised while writing this comment how much I miss web comment culture from the 00s.
Cthulhu_ 11 hours ago [-]
Counterpoint, blog posts age; information or opinion from 10 years ago may no longer be accurate or reflect the author's held beliefs. Is it still worth discussing it then?
That said, I run old fashioned forums and some older threads get revived there from time to time with new insights. Others get flagged up by copyright holders under DMCA takedown threats or bumped by spambots though.
niutech 11 hours ago [-]
Not necessarily 10 years ago, you cannot comment on a HN post even from a month ago!
zenmac 8 hours ago [-]
Why is that? Be good to join discussion from the past and bring back some zombie thread? No?
accrual 5 hours ago [-]
I wanted to add that some zombie/necro posts are useful outside the context of HN.
For example on retro computing boards it makes me so happy when someone bumps a 5 year old thread to share new details, benchmarks, etc. about some card or motherboard where the ancient thread is first thing that appears in search results.
edoceo 7 hours ago [-]
No. Re-post / start a new thread. Many times the old-threads will be cross-linked (I see this pattern a lot on HN)
pseudalopex 10 hours ago [-]
Information which is no longer accurate is worth identifying or updating.
dr_kretyn 10 hours ago [-]
There's a lot between "few hours on hacker news" and "10 years"
accrual 5 hours ago [-]
> I just realised while writing this comment how much I miss web comment culture from the 00s.
Remember Shoutboxes? :)
chistev 11 hours ago [-]
Good point.
PinkSheep 6 hours ago [-]
All roads lead to -Rome- the centralization of the Internet. Keep going!
guywithahat 8 hours ago [-]
But then people who find your blog can't comment on it without knowing the cross-post, and you risk spamming HN
ethmarks 8 hours ago [-]
Perhaps one could link to cross-posts from the blog? Maybe a "Discuss on HN" button. And the solution to avoid spamming HN is to avoid writing a large volume of low-quality content on the blog.
6 hours ago [-]
drnick1 7 hours ago [-]
"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 more effective. Second, Pi-hole is kind of heavy for what it does; you can accomplish the same by loading a blacklist directly to the config file of Unbound/Bind/Dnsmasq.
accrual 5 hours ago [-]
I personally feel differently about the Pihole. I run one and it blocks a lot of telemetry traffic from smart TVs, apps like Netflix, etc. that are not originating from a browser. I'm showing a 23.1% block rate today.
But for my use case, I like having the Pihole UI to see the charts and it's nice for temporarily unblocking one domain, etc.
> I personally feel differently about the Pihole. I run one and it blocks a lot of telemetry traffic from smart TVs, apps like Netflix, etc. that are not originating from a browser. I'm showing a 23.1% block rate today.
Damn. I played around with PiHole years ago on an original Raspberry Pi Model B, and kinda forgot about it--it broke some stuff, and most of my connected devices could run their own adblocker.
Only in the past year did I finally buy a "Smart" TV and leverage its existing GoogleTV apps, because I got tired of trying to maintain my aging Kodi Box. I should probably setup PiHole anew and point my Smart TV's DNS at it...
sherr 6 hours ago [-]
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.
drnick1 6 hours ago [-]
The issue is that (some) smart devices are known to bypass local DNS servers entirely. They either use a public DNS server or hardcoded IPs. The best thing would be not to connect any "smart" TV to the Internet. These are closed firmware devices with cameras and microphones and they just can't be trusted.
accrual 5 hours ago [-]
> The best thing would be not to connect any "smart" TV to the Internet.
Agree! I regret letting my Vizio TV stay online for as long as I did.
At first it was fine, and I did get a UI refresh a couple years back that was OK.
But then some update caused it to start ripping control away from whatever my last HDMI input was so it could show me ads (which fails). Even though it's perma-offline now, it still messes with my inputs sometimes.
fluoridation 4 hours ago [-]
I thought Pi-holes were supposed to block connections to blacklisted domains, not merely serve as local DNSs. Is that not what they do?
encom 6 hours ago [-]
>bypass local DNS servers
There are easy ways to fix that at the router level, but DNS-over-HTTPS clowns ruined this.
boilerupnc 6 hours ago [-]
Spot on! My samsung TV menus are soooo much better in terms of snappiness by having Pi-Hole running and also setting up DNAT for those IoT devices who want to hardcode their DNS.
accrual 5 hours ago [-]
> DNAT (Destination Network Address Translation)
Yes! This is easy to do on OpenBSD as well, though it's called "redirect" instead of "DNAT":
pass in quick on $int_if inet proto udp to any port 53 rdr-to $dns_server port 53
pass in quick on $int_if inet proto tcp to any port 53 rdr-to $dns_server port 53
drnick1 2 hours ago [-]
I also redirect port 53 traffic, and in addition filter traffic to "well known" public DNS servers like 1.1.1.1, 8.8.8.8, 9.9.9.9 and many others (lists can be found on GitHub), but this is ineffective against ads and telemetry served from hardcoded IPs.
Overall, it's just easier not to connect "smart" devices to the Internet at all. I prefer to use a Linux HTPC instead of a smart TV for example. It is completely under my control and I am not restricted to apps approved by Apple or Google, asked to log into anything or to accept ever-changing terms and conditions.
grishka 2 hours ago [-]
> First, ad blockers running in the browser are simply more effective.
On my phone I do both: I use AdGuard DNS to block ads system-wide, and Vivaldi's built-in ad blocker to block those ads that still slip through.
jayd16 6 hours ago [-]
Is that right? Mobile is like 60% of the web traffic and they don't really have popular and effective ad blocking.
1dom 5 hours ago [-]
There are native, easily accessible ublock variations for Firefox for Windows, Linux and Android.
A lot of nerds also have some form of private overlay network with default DNS to adguard or pihole or similar, again, making for identical adblock experience on all platforms.
jayd16 5 hours ago [-]
Yes and it seems great but there's no denying its not widely used.
fluoridation 4 hours ago [-]
Okay, but what does it matter? The options exist for people who want them, nonetheless.
jayd16 3 hours ago [-]
Because were talking about the current usage of ad blockers, not what options exist.
avree 3 hours ago [-]
There are plenty of great adblockers on iPhone too.
drnick1 2 hours ago [-]
iOS (Safari) also has uBlock now.
dvdgsng 2 hours ago [-]
I run ublock in all my browsers and devices, but other people on my network (family) don't, so pihole helps there. Its really not an either-or question, they are complementary.
mixedmath 6 hours ago [-]
That seemed to me like a radically high estimate of people who use ad blockers. But I see that the first page of results on MyFavoriteWebSearchEngine support that claim.
est 13 hours ago [-]
I ditched Disqus for the exact same reason, too many ads
Then I built an alternative using free Cloudflare Worker
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 advantange over Github issue/discussion based comment plugins:
1. All data is stored a .git
2. no login of any sort
Github OAuth login might leak all your repo data along with your `access_token` to the plugin provider.
The `git push` works for any remote. You can choose github/gitlab or whatever.
ffsm8 13 hours ago [-]
The issue with that approach is risk.
You now have a direct way for users to insert data into your repo, which can include illegal things. And if you're required to delete it later, you'll be forced to edit your git history.
But if everyone behaves, it's a great solution
cormorant 10 hours ago [-]
Worrying about editing git history buries the lede. Any comment system allows users to insert data into your site, which, if it might be illegal things, is a legal risk.
bmez 12 hours ago [-]
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.
est 10 hours ago [-]
> 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.
internetter 7 hours ago [-]
> 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!
est 10 hours ago [-]
> direct way for users to insert data into your repo
Yes, and spam is also a huge concern.
I plan to mitigate by adding "Pull Request" style moderation next.
And you can switch to a private repo
For mass moderation, just git clone, grep the lines, sed them out, and `git push -f`
Remember the use case is for static generated personal blogs.
I'd argue it's even quicker than, say a paginated bloated megabytes javascript rendered single-page application moderation system.
antonyh 12 hours ago [-]
I find the idea of using Git for comments somewhat terrifying, not least of all for the permanence of the history making moderation a nightmare.
est 9 hours ago [-]
They are just bunch of static hosted .jsonl text files, one comment per commit, and makes up exactly one line
In case of comments you don't like, just delete the line and `git commit`
to erase the history entirely, use `git cherry-pick` and `git push -f`
It might be a nightmare for people not familiar with `git`, but for folks running a static blog like Hugo, they use lots of shell commands anyway.
Cthulhu_ 11 hours ago [-]
.jsonl files are fine for low volume comment threads I think, but others have already mentioned the use of git for storage. Would sqlite or Cloudflare's own D1 (SQLite compatible, also available in their free plan) work as an alternative?
est 10 hours ago [-]
> Would sqlite or Cloudflare's own D1 work as an alternative
They certainly do, but for they same reason why people chose static site generators like Hugo over Wordpress, I'd like complete control of full data.
The good value of static-hosted comments is that you `git clone` for backup and `git push` for redudency.
I also dislike managing DBs. Think of all those mess with backups, migrations, imports, exports, difference between mysql/pg/sqlite/d1. Tons of operating cost just for the sake of few blog comments
It's just a bunch of .jsonl files, the last resort is direct inline those .jsonl into .html files when generating
ftchd 7 hours ago [-]
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)
firesteelrain 10 hours ago [-]
I have done something similar with API Gateway, Lambda and DynamoDB. It is very cheap and doesn’t use Git.
liampulles 7 hours ago [-]
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.
dominicrose 7 hours ago [-]
It's a bit sad that content creators, from individuals to big companies, have to (or at least feel like they have to) disable comments on their content, wether it's a video or an article.
Sending an e-mail is not the same thing, it's like Youtube removing the unlike button count and instead sending the info only to the creator.
This doesn't apply to your blog, but I've seen low quality or misleading content without a possibility to comment. Even worse: scams that include a fake comment section.
esjeon 7 hours ago [-]
I agree. Your blog represents you, so it must be fully curated by you. Others' opinions, you can always pull them manually into your website whenever necessary in whatever method and format you prefer. There's no reason to be bothered by random strangers injecting random things onto your own persona. They can always go to other communities if they seriously want to talk about your posts.
fluoridation 4 hours ago [-]
>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: http://www.goodmath.org/blog/2011/02/10/e-e-escultura-and-th...
I really do not believe that blog would be better by not having comments enabled.
conradfr 12 hours ago [-]
Wow thanks for the reminder! I have a small side project [0] with Disqus and got the email there would be ads but didn't think to check it out and due to ublock I was kind of oblivious to how they looked.
The size of it, above the comments (and under as well of course). That is madness.
I'll have to check some of the alternative listed in here. I could just code it but I really don't want to deal with spam and moderation... Or maybe I'll remove comments altogether.
I was so hopeful for Cactus.chat built on matrix, but like all products built on the matrix protocol, you have to follow their mantra of being unusable and undiscoverable. The main page for cactus chat even quit hosting the JS file and none of the maintainers think that's a problem lol.
Still a cool comments product and I still use it on my blog.
Hmmm, wouldn't it just be easier to make a new room for a new blog and just call it directly from the web client end? Not e2ee style to support more clients?
montebicyclelo 13 hours ago [-]
I did the same. I was sad to lose the comments, but the ads were awful and I don't particularly want someone elses ads / tracking on my hobby site. I switched to gisqus [1], which is powered by GitHub discussions, which seems to be working ok. (The site is hosted on GH pages so seems reasonable to also use GH discussions for the comments.)
I’m in the process of converting a Wordpress blog to a static site. We did have significant comment traffic back in the day so I did look into how to maintain comment functionality. I found Comentario https://docs.comentario.app/en/ which is a standalone comments engine that can be self-hosted and linked to the blog page. Single stand alone Go executable, SQLite database - seems dead simple and has built-in ways to migrate Wordpress comments.
Still, since we do not get that many comments these days, I’ll probably postpone it and just provide a static render of existing / historical comments which does have value for archival and discussion purposes.
blakesterz 11 hours ago [-]
What are you using to convert Wordpress to static pages?
erikig 10 hours ago [-]
As far as alternatives go, there was an interesting post a few weeks ago on using Bluesky as a commenting platform. It improves discoverability and adds a social aspect to comments.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44826164
I’ve also found HN to be a great commenting platform too.
m-hodges 10 hours ago [-]
There are similar¹𝄒²𝄒³ ideas for Mastodon / ActivityPub:
I like my implementation cause it blends really well with the blog making it looks almost native.
transferring the burden of maintenance - curation to a social media platform (and a slightly more open one to boot) has been a complete win.
sunaookami 13 hours ago [-]
Removed Disqus from my website after getting huge spam waves (not the classic garbage spam but "real" comments, but for completely different sites, like they were intended for other sites but instead posted to mine. They were all from a few days old accounts). I wish I'd have used the built-in WordPress comments from the start but well, it was a different time back then. Related: I've used WordPress Jetpack Stats until they extorted every free website, no export possible. Would've cost me 200 € per year, that's more than I pay for my website. Switched to self-hosted Umami but 10 years of data just gone.
lutzh 13 hours ago [-]
I 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 embedded in the blog page).
edarchis 12 hours ago [-]
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.
a1r 11 hours ago [-]
If you are a small personal site, you can request a free upgrade to the Plus version (which can remove ads) by emailing publisher-success@disqus.com and asking.
I did this in late 2023 and got a response in two days.
This does remain an absolutely horrific business practice.
shark1 10 hours ago [-]
Disqusting is the copious amount of trackers they inject in the websites.
For small websites a good start is to get comments by email, publishing only the ones that adds value to the article or conversation. Why? Because we have lots of noise done by social media. A way of curating the comments increase the quality of the website.
If the website gets traction, than it's good to consider a tool to facilitate the commenting and moderation.
lioeters 10 hours ago [-]
> Disqusting
Bravo for this banger of a new word.
tracker1 2 hours ago [-]
I'd be surprised if there wasn't a self-hostable, open-source JS injected comment system similar to Discus available. For me, I'd like to stay as close to SSG as possible for blogs, and only load comments on-demand for users. Just to give the best initial impression of the content. One of these days I'll finish out my setup and get back into blogging.
PaulHoule 6 hours ago [-]
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.
MasterScrat 13 hours ago [-]
I 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?)
reactordev 13 hours ago [-]
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 ruined it for everyone else. Bots, drivel, linkbacks, social media, stupid laws, and an aversion to independence - we have what we have today. Large platforms that trick humans into use because they have the largest arenas.
Also, the author’s experience with seeing scammy ads on their site doesn’t mean that others are seeing the same ads. Because they ran ad-free for so long it’s possible their token in the AdTech ecosystem is stale in which case it hasn’t put it into any buckets yet. Ergo, you get the smoking/drinking/scamming/doesn’t fit category.
A “token” is a device or ident signature used to identify a viewer or user so that they can tabulate impressions, build personas, categorize your shopping habits, track the sites you visit, link your token with others in your proximity
johannes1234321 12 hours ago [-]
> 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.
mschuster91 12 hours ago [-]
> 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.
rchaud 7 hours ago [-]
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.
For those of you stuck with this issue reading this, there is a nice open source commenting system I found on GitHub https://valine.js.org/en/index.html
I'm not sure it's worth the upkeep to have comments. Seems that mostly spammers comment, and rarely real people. I just wanted a low-maintenance commenting system and Commento seemed to work decently at the time. I'm now noticing it's showing some CORS error, so I guess comments have been broken on my site for some time, doh...
jasoneckert 10 hours ago [-]
When I was evaluating ways to add comments to my blog on GitHub Pages, I quickly passed by Disqus because it was a 3rd party service that I didn't trust for reasons like this.
Instead, I went with a tight solution that minimized 3rd party interaction: GitHub Discussions leveraged using the Giscus app (https://jasoneckert.github.io/myblog/github-discussions-blog...). You have to have a GitHub account to post comments using this method, which I like because my blog is geared to those that would have that.
BatteryMountain 11 hours ago [-]
For those on the consuming side, Privacy Badger in Firefox has been blocking disqus for years without fail if you don't like seeing comments on sites.
abdullahkhwaja 12 hours ago [-]
I have an email address for comments at the bottom of my blog posts. If they can write me an email and it's something that contributes to the discussion, I'll include it in a comments section at the bottom of the post. For bigger discussions, cross-post to social is the way to go.
Shugyousha 11 hours ago [-]
I like the idea of linking to a public inbox (i.e. an email inbox whose contents can be checked from the web).
That grants people an easy way to discuss content and to check any prior discussion, if any.
That's exactly how periodicals worked for a hundred years. A letter to the editor that is published in the next edition. That's how I always mentally viewed blogs and expected most niche sites to eventually do that. In fact, a local "neat things" blog was successfully doing that for quite a while.
The Web would be a better place without advertising. It might be smaller as well, but that's fine by me.
analog8374 8 hours ago [-]
I think they'd just increase the cost of everything until you needed advertising, then. That's a trick they use a lot.
CIPHERSTONE 3 hours ago [-]
I suspect 99.5% of blogs like this don't make any appreciable amount of money from ads. Which begs the question, why even do it? If it cheapens your readers experience and you are not making significant money from it, just don't do it at all. Everyone thinks their blog will make money, few do.
SpicyUme 2 hours ago [-]
Maybe I'm just lucky but looking at special interest blogs I appreciate the comments from other users/experts/makers. Diqus is the latest in a string of commenting tool and they all seem to have issues over time. A favorite blog resource of mine got nuked after the comments were filled with spam, and possibly used to hack the site. Unfortunately the blog was a collection of years of specific experiences in places with very little other information for that activity. I've talked to the owner about getting information in the years since and he's been helpful, but building the site back would take too long for him, so it's mostly gone. The comments there were useful for updates from people who visited those locations, or found alternate routes/approaches.
dingdingdang 12 hours ago [-]
All centralized services will eventually present a variant of this disease and indeed almost all are already. Actual baseline improvement in technology requires fully decentralized software similar to bittorrent and it's ilk imho.
lukev 8 hours ago [-]
I've been waiting for someone to build a Disqus alternative on ATProto (the protocol behind Bluesky, Blacksky, Skylight, etc.)
Posts could show both under the article (like "normal" comments) and for aggregated discussion on Bluesky / any other app that renders Bluesky posts.
And you'd get "free" moderation (at least for basic stuff) from the Bluesky mod team.
Proof of concept: the best blog commenting system I’ve seen uses ActivityPub (to integrate with Mastodon). It’s utterly easy to use, and pretty seamless. I don’t know what it’s called or if there’s more than one implementation, but you can see this in action at jwz’s site and a handful of others.
RajT88 9 hours ago [-]
These look like standard disqus ads. Which is to say - like you see when you scroll to the bottom of a Breitbart article.
I would totally agree that this makes your site look like an armpit of the internet, but also - there was a way to figure out that this would happen ahead of time. Google Ads last I checked weren't nearly as bad, but even these were prone to scams and malvertising campaigns on sites I've frequented.
dross 5 hours ago [-]
I didn't notice this problem, but then I realized that as I'm using Brave browser ads might be blocked by default. So I tried in Chrome and still no ads. I'm using Jekyll for my blog so I wonder what's saving me from this issue.
If anyone is able to confirm that they're not seeing ads either, I would be grateful.
kens 7 hours ago [-]
I encountered a similar problem with blog subscription services: I was using "follow.it", which would handle subscriptions and send out an email when I have a new article. It worked fine until follow.it went spammy a few months ago, switching to emails that were mostly objectionable junk ads.
Does anyone have advice for handling blog subscriptions? I'm thinking of switching to Kit, which has a free tier that seems reasonable. Paid services seem to start at $50/month, which is way more than I want to spend. (Originally, Blogger handled subscriptions automatically, but Google removed that feature.)
justsid 7 hours ago [-]
RSS
kens 3 hours ago [-]
I provide RSS but many people want to subscribe to my blog through email. So I'm looking for an email-based subscription solution in addition to RSS.
onetokeoverthe 7 hours ago [-]
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dbishai 3 hours ago [-]
Shameless plug but I built https://blogmate.io/ with Elixir and Phoenix LiveView for this exact problem.
ftchd 7 hours ago [-]
I don't know why but I never commented on a disqus blog, ever. Something about it makes me feel like the author didn't care too much about comment and gave us the IKEA version. No issues with it, works well, but it feels sterile.
Try using a Bluesky-based solution so that everyone owns the content?
I made Bluniversal Comments partly for this, but there are other Bluesky-based solutions out there if you prefer.
xenator 13 hours ago [-]
I blocked Disqus locally on my computer via /etc/hosts many years ago. Reason is very simply. Because comments as genre is almost useless.
falcor84 12 hours ago [-]
> 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.
npodbielski 12 hours ago [-]
You are putting comments on HN right now. i guess not entirelly useless then?
heresie-dabord 11 hours ago [-]
> putting comments on HN [...] not entirelly useless then?
Comment systems are useful/effective when someone is paying the full cost of moderation.
rkomorn 12 hours ago [-]
OP wrote "almost useless" which, by definition, is also "not entirely useless".
delirehberi 11 hours ago [-]
I stopped to use disqus a long time ago. Instead I am using hugo2nostr to publish my blog post on nostr network. So, all nostr users can comment in their clients.
How big is the nostr network? Is it peer to peer instead of federated?
delirehberi 10 hours ago [-]
Nope, its working over relays and Nostr network growing faster than federation network. You can get more details on official site: nostr.org
echelon 4 hours ago [-]
That's the next best thing to P2P. I really like this design.
I'll have to dive in sometime. This interests me in a way that Mastodon and BlueSky do not.
nsim 13 hours ago [-]
I've found https://remark42.com/ works well with static sites, and has plenty of user login options.
But, the solution I've been looking for/prototyping is one that lets people comment from the Fadiverse, so it will also double as a feed. Nothing to show yet, but one-day maybe.
socalgal2 7 hours ago [-]
I have disqus on several sites. No ads so shrug?
Having written my own multiple times and used several others before disqus I’m unlikely to switch unless the new thing is super compelling and I believe it will stick around.
Spam is hard to deal with. Akismet fails miserably for me. disqus has the fact they can track users across sites. Spam one site and you’re off all sites.
sachac 9 hours ago [-]
I took Disqus out of my blog back in March. I'd been meaning to do that for a while. Disqus had started to feel quite icky. I exported 18 years of comments from Disqus and wrote a little code to include them in my static site generation process. Now I just stick a footer with an e-mail link (and Mastodon thread link, if there is one) on each of my posts on the website and RSS feed. I get few comments, anyway, so I'd rather not subject everyone to all that tracking and ad nonsense.
thomashabets2 13 hours ago [-]
When the ads showed up I immediately put disqus loading behind a "load comments despite ads" button, and instead just had a static export of the comments loaded by default.
But that's a temporary solution.
Sure, I can code an in house comment system within an hour, but the real work is to combat spam. Because people (and now also disqus) suck.
aubanel 12 hours ago [-]
Giscus is a cool comments management solution vis Github:
It lets users auth through Github then posts comments as discussions under your repo.
We use it here for instance: https://predibench.com/models
thiht 11 hours ago [-]
I like giscus too, it’s pretty neat. It makes a lot of sense for tech blogs since the audience likely already has a GitHub account. And the comments being hosted in discussions makes them easy to backup in case you want to roll your own comment system someday.
didip 5 hours ago [-]
I didn't realize Disqus is still alive. Yeah, there's no use in embedding things like this if it doesn't even bring in the traffic. You gained 0 and they gained 100.
tonymet 6 hours ago [-]
I removed Disqus 7 years ago when I noticed their Javascript+HTML embeds ballooned my 75kb static blog into 3mb+ with sluggish loading times. It also failed every Performance test like Chrome Devtools Lighthouse Perf Tab.
We need to ruthlessly audit third party deps for privacy, perf, spam etc.
Apreche 9 hours ago [-]
I strongly recommend not having comments on your blog at all.
whatamidoingyo 7 hours ago [-]
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?
jmmv 9 hours ago [-]
Same here. I removed Disqus a while back due to how obnoxious it became. Then, I built my own commenting platform and, while it was a fun thing to do... I think it's worthless. People don't comment on blogs anymore, and when they do, the value is too low. Discussions happen elsewhere now. I've been tempted to just remove the comments altogether but haven't gotten to it.
noosphr 13 hours ago [-]
Mailing lists are still the superior format.
The barrier to entry is a feature and not a bug.
hsbauauvhabzb 12 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
bell-cot 12 hours ago [-]
The 1) Get Invited, and 2) Physically Attend barriers for parties are a lot higher than for most mailing lists.
antonyh 12 hours ago [-]
I used to use Disqus on my blog a long time ago, but dropped it with one of the many reboots. Having comments on a blog still seems like a good idea but I'm still half minds over on-page vs fediverse-based discussion, or maybe even both. Spam is a constant problem.
One alternative I've come across while researching this was https://cusdis.com/ - has anyone tried this?
conradfr 9 hours ago [-]
Looked good but it seems this comment single-handedly crash them?
Also the project does not seem active.
anagogistis 6 hours ago [-]
Thanks! I just disabled it on my blog after reading your post. I hadn’t realized how bad it was because of my ad blocker. Truly disqus-ting...
Hard_Space 13 hours ago [-]
Disqus is a great idea turned into hot garbage by (inevitable) lowest-level monetization. I once worked on a blog with Disqus. Whenever we had a hit, such as an HN front page, horrific ads would be injected into the comments section for that page. Any page without significant traffic had no ads, lulling you into a false sense of security. If a page 'hit' in your off-hours, the ghastly and repulsive ads could be running for a day, or even a weekend.
They could be turned off at the time but only on a case-by-case basis. In the end, I got rid of Disqus.
jaapz 13 hours ago [-]
When it was released there were no ads at all, and it was a great way of quickly adding comments to your site. Of course there is no thing as free lunch so the enshittification was inevitable
niutech 10 hours ago [-]
There is a free lunch - see all those FOSS commenting systems.
chuckadams 10 hours ago [-]
Disqus was openly bragging about how many people they were tracking and data-mining from day 1.
f4uCL9dNSnQm 13 hours ago [-]
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timpera 10 hours ago [-]
You still need comments on your blog. I hate having to log in to Twitter or HN to leave a comment.
capestart 10 hours ago [-]
Ugh, i feel u. Disqus ads have gotten way out of hand. It’s such a shame because the platform used to be so clean and user-friendly. It’s almost like they’re trying to ruin the experience. Definitely time to ditch it for something better. Any better alternatives?
alltheseas 5 hours ago [-]
Improving performance, and removing ads is the way to go.
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.
npodbielski 10 hours ago [-]
Looks very nice. Thanks.
cgsmith 10 hours ago [-]
I wish there was a Git way of commenting even anonymously (not necessarily without auth). Then a site like this, written with Hugo, could keep all the comments and the moderation/spam could be built in with a GitHub authorization.
splitbrain 13 hours ago [-]
I was in the same boat and built my own commenting system. It has an importer for disqus (so you don't lose your old comments) and also imports Mastodon replies.
I forget what HN linked blog post it was, but I noticed a bunch of ads on a website, and realized it was all from Disqus. It's a shame because it looked like the website owner had them setup.
Coeur 7 hours ago [-]
That's a great step forward. But: he says he wants his users to be free from unwanted tracking, yet still has google analytics installed.
edent 12 hours ago [-]
For 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.
krapp 12 hours ago [-]
Unless you're famous enough that everything you post gets to the top of Google, no one will read your content unless you post it to a social media platform with a curated audience. Literally no one but bots and AI crawlers. I mean, you have a whole list of crossposting links at the bottom of your own blog posts, including to HN and Mastodon, so you clearly understand. You wouldn't lose anything by limiting comments to just those curated social media platforms except spam and bots.
edent 12 hours ago [-]
Looking through my recent comments, the majority are from people filling in the box on my posts. So, yes, I would lose a lot if I switched them off.
You'll also notice that I use WebMentions to import those 3rd party discussions (or links to them) into my blog.
That way users aren't subject to the advertising on platform A, the poor moderation on platform B, or the difficulty of even finding the comments on platform C.
krapp 11 hours ago [-]
I was actually going to suggest importing comments from a Fediverse account like Mastodon as a solution to that problem but I saw you were already doing something along those lines.
I'm trying Mastodon comments on my own blog, that I'm not posting here because it isn't really ready, from my own Mastodon account. I'd never even consider public comments anymore, it just seems like inviting trouble.
bilekas 12 hours ago [-]
It'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.
kokada 12 hours ago [-]
> 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
Yes. I think Disqus is trying to get money from the long tail of blogs that enabled Disqus in the past and never bothered to look up for the policy changes. I am sure they started with small, non-invasive ads and eventually got bigger until we get in the situation that we are today.
So even if someone enabled Disqus in the past because they seemed a reasonable system a few years ago, their blogs are now an ad farm and the original owner may have zero idea since it is a blog they abandoned years ago. Heck, my old Wordpress blog that I don't even remember the password is probably an ad field nowadays that is probably generating pennies for one of those companies.
analog8374 8 hours ago [-]
It's like that episode of black mirror where if he shut his eyes to the ads it would start yelling at him.
bilekas 7 hours ago [-]
If they could, you absolutely know they would.
lo_fye 5 hours ago [-]
I don't think anyone is surprised by this.
kakarot253 10 hours ago [-]
You can use github for comments, I had implemented it on my blog earlier. Currently removed the section completly. Here is an example on this site.
Which means complete control of all your github account.
wltr 7 hours ago [-]
This constant difference between the original title and its censored version contributes into the whole impression (this, plus the lack of any moderation log) into the whole community to be very much censored and demotivates me to be here. Which isn’t a bad thing for me personally, the domination part, but the censoring part for no reason is quite disturbing.
Why not keep the original title? Rhetorical question.
garganzol 1 hours ago [-]
In this case, keeping the original title would allow you to be better connected to the reality. But this is not what some actors want - they want you to stay disconnected, and thus easily "influenced", to put it mildly.
I tried we mentions for a while, but then switched to just POSSE (publish (on your) own site, syndicate elsewhere). So the comments are moved to other platforms atm.
ggirelli 10 hours ago [-]
*webmentions
10 hours ago [-]
wateralien 11 hours ago [-]
A comment system on top of the AT Protocol seems like the way to go.
11 hours ago [-]
BobAliceInATree 8 hours ago [-]
You're using an free tier supported by ads, what would you expect?
Either pay the money they ask if it's worth having comments, or build your own system.
rchaud 9 hours ago [-]
There was once a time when advertisers had to show some creativity in their ad copy to develop brand recognition and stay within the editorial guidelines of magazines and newspapers.
Online "targeted" ads eliminated the gatekeeper in favour of a free-for-all where shady companies are encouraged to hide their identities so they can simply advertise under a different name when their ad account eventually gets banned. 20 years ago I was seeing scam ads for "mail order brides", "free iPods" and "legal buds", today its crypto scams , political spam and misinformation.
ksec 12 hours ago [-]
Edit: 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.
Enshittification is everywhere, unless you own your stuff. I know it's easier to use a third-party service, but please, consider hosting your own content to keep full control over it.
AznHisoka 10 hours ago [-]
Does hosting it in wordpress count?
fortran77 5 hours ago [-]
There are a number of websites I like, like https://quoteinvestigator.com/ but I'll never send links to them to people that I think may not have ad blockers (my Mom on her iPad, etc) because the non-adblocked experience is so awful.
deadbabe 12 hours ago [-]
If people want to write comments provide an email address to send comments to. You will get better comments this way.
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.
runxel 12 hours ago [-]
Came here to recommend that as well.
Or just leave it. Nobody needs to comment on blog posts, really. :D
louwrentius 10 hours ago [-]
Based on this article, I decided to remove comments from my blog as I was using Disqus too.
I liked the comments, they were infrequent and OK, but I'm not going to add an alternative, maybe in the future when I feel like it.
deafpolygon 11 hours ago [-]
I won't have anything to do with ads, on principle- I realize this removes a potential income stream for me, but I don't care.
It is revolting how riddled the default web view is with advertisement and that the only way to browse sanely, you must install an adblocker.
aa_is_op 12 hours ago [-]
Disqus 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.
redbell 10 hours ago [-]
> With this post, I’ve removed Disqus. It was making my blog worse, and frankly, they were profiting off my work and my visitor’s data.
Ironically, if you look at the screenshot, just below the comments' section, you will read: 'Subscribe', 'Privacy' and 'Do Not Sell My Data'. Seriously?! You are already torturing my visitors by throwing many ads, at the same time, on their faces. How can I trust you?
Also, what drives me cra*y the most about online Ads is that they are random and have no relation with the content of the page I am looking at. Oftentimes, they went extremely far by showing what I consider near explicit content.
awithrow 9 hours ago [-]
The 'Subscribe', 'Privacy' and 'Do Not Sell My Data' buttons are still part of the Disqus wodget
noirscape 8 hours ago [-]
In terms of blogs, for selfhosting comments, the main ones that seems interesting for selfhosted setups are probably remark42[0] and utterance.es[1]. Remark42 is a low barrier Disqus clone with social logins (as well as just plain usernames) that also makes it fairly easy for users to bulk export their own data (as well as delete I think?), which ought to take care of most GDPR stuff.
Utterance.es is GitHub issues backed comments, which is an inherent barrier to commenting, but YMMV if that's an actual problem (generally the value of unbarred comment sections is abysmal). Like remark42, it's open source, but you're relying on a third party's servers.
I became “blind” to what the web is really like for most users. I’ve tried to keep this blog minimalist - a clean place to find answers. Those ads not only ruin that experience; they trample privacy too
I’ve said it once, I’ll say it a thousand times: the free and open internet died decades ago and is being propped up in Google’s yard as a scarecrow against public outrage. Online display advertising is a scam at best — it has to be terrible, because it’s just not very effective otherwise.
If you have any recommendations for alternative commenting systems (especially those that respect privacy or are self-hosted), I’d love to hear them!
I’ve heard great things about ATProto comments (aka “comments through BlueSky”), tho that’s obviously more setup. But this might not be the guy for it; pretty funny to see “hit me up on X” right next to calls for privacy, self-hosting, and authorial-control…
renewiltord 7 hours ago [-]
Haha lol it's a chumbox. That's wild.
FooBarWidget 11 hours ago [-]
I had a similar incident with Disqus. But I didn't even know they were showing ads on my website because I had Adblock enabled. Until a user without adblock emailed me. facepalm
EGreg 8 hours ago [-]
Ah, color me shocked that capitalism leads to enshittification over time. Why would people embed a for-profit third party platform in their Web 1.0 site and let them do whatever they want? Because they don’t have the software to do “social” Web 2.0 stuff themselves.
Perhaps there should be an open source alternative. Why isn’t there one by now?
opengrass 8 hours ago [-]
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BoKKeR11 13 hours ago [-]
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4laska 11 hours ago [-]
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Raed667 11 hours ago [-]
100$ / year for comments ? I'm guessing this is not aimed at small blogs with a couple of posts a year
p0w3n3d 13 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
boxed 13 hours ago [-]
The ad spam is a consequence of EU laws? That's clearly bs.
p0w3n3d 5 hours ago [-]
Content filtering increases cost. That's all. I've been on many forums running non-profit. But when you have to hire admins or pay for AI it gets expensive
phendrenad2 13 hours ago [-]
I don't know why a $5 VPS and a random CMS isn't the default for developers blogs. Dead simple, runs for years without maintenance, minimal cost, no ads.
mixedbit 13 hours ago [-]
Comments are the only functionality of a blog that require write access to a backend, without comments a blog can be a simple collection of static files. Any write access to a backend exposes the blog to potential vulnerabilities, requires the backend to be kept up to date. This is not dead simple and does require maintenance. Updating is not trivial if a version of a backend becomes obsolete, you need to dedicate time to migrate your backend to new versions to stay secure.
rwmj 13 hours ago [-]
If you really run it "for years without maintenance" then your blog will get taken over by attackers and used to distribute malware or worse.
JdeBP 13 hours ago [-]
Indeed, the problem isn't necessarily even the site being taken over. There was an example of what happens to comments over a period of 9 years without anyone dealing with spam on Hacker News just the other day.
Well, back in the day this lead to thousands upon thousands of vulnerable WordPress sites
mickeyp 13 hours ago [-]
False equivalence. That the creators of various PHP blogging platforms sucked at security does not invalidate the poster's point that a self-hosted CMS with a simple comment system is indeed much simpler and easier to reason about.
rokkamokka 13 hours ago [-]
I suppose it's rather the "without maintenance" part. Had everyone updated their WordPress sites the problem would've been much less.
InMice 13 hours ago [-]
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.
robinsonb5 12 hours ago [-]
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.
undebuggable 13 hours ago [-]
Without comments it's much simpler and cheaper than a $5 VPS and a random CMS, with comments it's much complicated and expensive than a $5 VPS and a random CMS.
HeckFeck 13 hours ago [-]
I've been using self-hosted Isso to serve comments on my static sites. It's worked well enough, it's practically the same as Disqus.
edarchis 13 hours ago [-]
The author is using a random CMS, namely Hugo.
You probably mean a PHP that can be hosted for cheap. But then, you end up with a Wordpress nightmare, even more spam and security issues.
I had a pretty popular blog and some posts gathered hundreds of useful comments. But I was so tired of fighting spam that I threw it all away and started using Hugo too, without comments.
kakarot253 10 hours ago [-]
Me too, there is no need to have comments I feel you can have a feedback button at most if you want it.
antiloper 13 hours ago [-]
Once you add comments you have to add a database and anti-spam measures. Not so simple anymore.
12 hours ago [-]
Rendered at 22:31:30 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
When I forget to sign in to YouTube, I see the same pattern, shitty ads that are clearly only allowed because otherwise YouTube wouldn't have sufficient ad inventory to meet their internal KPIs.
Meanwhile when I watch YouTube I get a stream of: "5G blocking beanies", highly questionable medical products, gross out ads about poo and etc ...
It really degrades my view of YouTube / Google.
Who buys pillows because of email spam and YouTube ads? I don't get it. It's probably not a scam, but a very obnoxious company nonetheless.
I'm not fully sure about this, an ad network which does that very reliably can probably charge the ad provisioning companies extra due to it being on more high quality sides/locations and pay out extra little due to having "high quality low disturbing" ads.
But with the Google being a quasi monopoly for ad networks on any open platform and most people either blocking all adds or no adds there is just little room for alternatives. I do use uBlock Origin for some custom filters, but I which instead of "on" / "of" there where "on but more like privacy badger" / "on full" / "off" with the first being the default so that users can create an insensitive for better ad handling.
The reality is, of course, that Google and its ilk doesn't give a single rat's ass about people falling from scams or getting infected by malware. Scams and malware pays better than "ethical" ads (to the degree that such a thing exists). It's a travesty that there are apparently no laws against their behavior.
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.
For the bulk of legit advertisers, this won't affect the bottom line of a given campaign and will keep out the scammers, etc. Leading to a much higher quality ecosystem. It would also give Google the potential for a higher percentage share of profits in the system. It would also likely reduce the CPM pricing though, possibly to a larger extent than profits from the validation system itself.
But it would be a much healthier overall system.
there is in the UK. And likely in most other jurisdictions too. But it's about penalizing the advertisers rather than the platform. Which clearly neither works at scale nor across borders.
This definitely feels like a better use case for an "online safety act" -- but instead we got censorship laws....
If it wasn't a threat, they wouldn't police it so hard.
In the USA I’m pretty sure advertising scams - even the more ‘benign’ ones like claiming a product does something it doesn’t do or lying about its efficiency - are illegal. There’s just no - or not nearly enough - enforcement.
https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/topics/truth-advertising
The situation’s been like this for a few years now.
If she had had more time, I could see Khan going after fake ads as well. There's nothing to me that suggests that she was deliberately ignoring fraudulent ads when she was extremely pro-consumer in nearly every other policy.
While it has gotten around the "logical fallacy community", for lack of a better term, in the last few years, it could still stand to be known by more people. It's become very popular. I think there are many who have subconsciously picked it up as just how things are done.
Google disabled the Adblock, Facebook let the ad run on their site, and Microsoft hosted the malicious site on their cloud provider. Shoutout to Microsoft for taking the site down within the hour after I reported it- more than I can say for any of the blatantly illegal or scam ads I’ve seen on YouTube. but still, 3 big tech companies that could have definitely stopped this is they really wanted to.
What did your grandmother need Chrome for? You couldn't find the 5m it would take to set her up with Firefox?
But I don't care* about that, I care that they're visually obnoxious and sometimes slow.
* Well, usually. Way back when, there used to be occasional news about browser sandbox escapes.
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.
Medical supplements or plans that make claims that clearly aren’t real, financial scams (crypto or get-rich-quick schemes), or product scams (this new device that ‘they’ don’t want you to know about can heat/cool your house in minutes for pennies!).
I’m pretty sure none of this is legal, and Google obviously doesn’t care.
FWIW I have ad personalization off - perhaps it’s a bit better for those who don’t?
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.
I'm happy to pay for media, news, social networks etc. I don't purchase things based on anything other than personal recommendations and research. I have no use for advertising, and I have no desire or need for ad-supported platforms. I'm pretty sure I'm not alone. People say advertising works, and that justifies it. The thing is, advertising only works on enough people to justify it. Everyone else hates it with a passion, or studiously avoids it. I'm not sure if we're a majority or a minority, it doesn't matter, but we suffer advertising and wish it were gone.
Advertising needs to change. It would be nice if it just went away, but realistically that's not going to happen. It needs to be recognised as harmful and regulated as a harmful product.
We've known that advertising is "filling the world with bile and garbage" for decades.
First I've ever heard this, and I have been working in marketing all my life.
What exactly do you mean by this? Where have you heard it?
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 yet another AI agent company as generic as the rest. Literally the organizations he’s railing against and calling wasteful. It was clearly because he handed off the advertising to one of these injection services.
Sidebar: these ads tend to perform terribly. Actual ad reads by the host(s) are the only thing that lead to meaningful conversions in podcasts.
Yes, but those are dynamic too: if you go back and download old episodes, for example, you'll get the current run of ads.
The biggest giveaway is when the ads are dropped in the middle of someone talking. Pretty much any hits that are manually added are led into by the hosts if it’s mid-show.
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.
I’m not even against pre-recorded spots by whoever the sponsor is if that’s his deal though the conversion rate on those are not as good. It’s just the completely random ads that the podcaster(s) don’t even know are playing on their show. The entire reason advertising on podcasting was more effective in the 2010s and early 2020s was because there was a little more trust with their listeners, there’s a relationship at play even if it’s parasocial. If they were actively reading on air, I assumed that they vetted the company and it at least passed the smell test (though plenty sure didn’t, I would say the bar was a little higher than other media formats).
Sure they can; it just slows the money-pipe
This forum doesn't exist to get you to comment on news stories; it exists to attract tech people to YC.
For example:
- gambling, e.g. slot machines, sports betting
- healing crystals
- palm readings
- carnival games
Perhaps the right distinction is whether something is legally a fraud or not. But I kind of agree that most ads are scams and also that ad networks don't have the ability to separate legal scams from fraud. So I just block them all.
what about iPhones? They're ubiquitous enough that Apple probably doesn't need ads to let people know they exist, yet every at launch ads for them are plastered everywhere. Same with soft drinks and cars, just to name a few. Before you say "iPhone sucks", the same can be said for basically all other phone OEMs, and if your theory allows categorizing an entire industry as crap, your theory is basically unfalsifiable.
Or maybe, just maybe, the entire industry is crap and so many people are complicit such that it becomes a self-sustaining problem.
If you're defining "ads" to be a "problem", then it turns the statement into a meaningless tautology. Only crappy brand use ads, because brands that use ads are crappy.
Henry hoovers are ubiquitous in the professional market in the UK and well regarded for durability, performance and the cute face all their cleaners have. Essentially anyone in the UK will have used, or seen one be used
Another metric comes to my mind: if a newcomer has money to spend on ads, then it's a stable firm.
I'm sure there are more.
Nah, they advertise (probably) for a similar reason as car brands do, to make the people who bought it already feel better and more reassured about their choice.
Also, obligatory "lucky 10k" xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1053/
Costco has an entire section of affiliate links to manufacturers they have worked with. The people who go there get special discounts on the products purchased from those manufacturers, and the only ads you get about it are on Costco's site reminding you that this section exists.
Websites could easily add a "shop" page to their sites and screen and curate a selection of companies willing to pay an affiliate link bonus to the site when users purchase through those links.
This would help them generate income while also not enshittifying the site or experience for users.
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.
TBH, I have considered writing a version (this isn't my work at all, yet) that does submit the blathering server-side so it looks like there is a useful round trip, but:
* I have more important projects awaiting the much fabled arrival of Free Time!
* While it could potentially keep an idiot “happy” longer, I'd have to mess around with some sort of login system to give the right people the right comments back, it couldn't rely on a just session ID as that would be as volatile as the comments in local storage.
* Taking in the data gives the possibility of DoS by extra routes.
* Giving back the data gives the possibility of the comments being abused as a Heath-Robinson-esk storage device!
> Please don't use HN primarily for promotion. It's ok to post your own stuff part of the time, but the primary use of the site should be for curiosity.
This is more or less artifact of HN algorithm, it's common to get single digit votes for majority of your posts. Whether something blows up feel almost random, you have to get pretty lucky to hit a time window when there's not that many posts or a lot of people look at new page and upvote the post at the same time to make it snowball. Many links are posted multiple times with no traction and then they suddenly blow up on 4th attempt.
HN doesn't have an algorithm, per se.
There are voting mechanics, and some sites gain or lose a penalty based on content or type (most generic news sites, for example, are slightly penalised). There are keyword / topic penalties too for issues that are dominating the hivemind for a period.
But mostly what you're seeing is simple mass-media power-law effects, along with early-action advantage:
- Votes / article tend to follow a power-law curve, where the frequency of high votes is inversely related to the vote. This typically shows as a linear relation when the log of both values is taken (log(frequency) vs. log(votes)). There are 30 front-page slots on HN, about 11,000 opportunities per year (at day's end, more if you count intra-day appearances), vs. about 400,000 submissions (see: <https://whaly.io/posts/hacker-news-2021-retrospective>). Most submissions won't make the grade, often through no fault of their own. I've looked into this in some detail, including looking at votes/comments by story position (there's a sharp decrease here as well).
- A small amount of early activity (upvotes, flags, comments) tends to have an outsized effect on the trajectory of a given story. Low-quality comments are particularly deleterious, and are hunted aggressively by mods for this reason.
- Stories often do far better on a subsequent submission. Part of this is probably randomness, part also a familiarity effect among those reviewing the "New" queue. If at first you don't succeed ... try again, a few times, at least.
- Stories can get selected (or nominated for) the Second Chance or Invited pools. These increase odds of landing higher on the front page, and are used fairly frequently. See "pool" <https://news.ycombinator.com/pool> and "invited" <https://news.ycombinator.com/invited> under "lists".
> 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 partially from network effects but it can be massively amplified by the system, which is exactly what HN does. Not only it bakes the power law directly into the score eqaution, but it also shows the list sorted by score by default, which creates a positive feedback loop on votes.
Actually I'm a bit perplexed that it works this well, HN algorithm was one of the first that I implemented on our site and it was quite terrible even after a lot of tuning. I feel like it must be tuned for some volume of posts and people, otherwise it doesn't make much sense to me.
<https://knightcolumbia.org/content/the-myth-of-the-algorithm...>
To the extent that HN does utilise specific procedural mechanisms to adjust the priority of content, it's virtually always away from the typical patterns of algorithmic amplification: less emotion, less outrage, fewer hot takes, less nationalism and relgious flamewars, and specifically toward "intellectual curiosity and thoughtful conversation": <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13108404>.
It would be possible, yes, though incredibly disingenuous, to argue that what HN is doing is itself amplification. Yes, any curation is an amplification of some content over other, but in a world where "algorithmic content" means clickbait, brain-crack, and stickyness, HN is quite clearly aiming for something else.
Another facile objection is that HN fails to achieve its stated goals. Well, yes, it does, and the mods freely admit this (see, e.g.: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20188101>). Why does HN fall short? Because the problem is hard (see, e.g., <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16163743>).
If power-law dynamics were purely the result of manipulative algorithmic amplification, we'd see them only in online media subject to such amplification. And that's simply not the case. Power laws are fundamental to not only all of human communications and interactions (word and letter frequencies, for example, neither of which suggest a strong influence by algorithmic amplification), but to all manner of natural phenomena, including those entirely outside the realm of biological activity (e.g., frequency/magnitude plots of earthquakes, volcanoes, asteroid impacts, and stellar novae).
And in the realm of interpersonal online communications, HN's goals and interventions (mods, voting, and some programmed mechanisms) are desperately trying to swim upstream. As someone whose online tenure pre-dates the Web and extends to pre-Eternal September Usenet, HN has done remarkably well, and outlived many of its antecedents' and competitors' useful or entire lives (Usenet, Slashdot, Digg, Reddit, Google+, et cetera). Trust me, I'd love to see it do better (a view often voiced by mods as well). But in an ordinal ranking with what actually exists it's an exemplar.
This isn't a nitpick, it's a core and central point with (literally) universal applicability.
In blogs people can come along anytime and use comments to add additional information/context/perspectives, point out misunderstandings or outdated information, share updates, pose questions and start interesting conversations that do not have an expiration date on them.
The discussion for the article can be found on the same webpage by readers, they don't have to go looking on external sites, most of which have terrible searchability and now require logins just to view content and can delete threads and valuable discussions arbitrarily.
I just realised while writing this comment how much I miss web comment culture from the 00s.
That said, I run old fashioned forums and some older threads get revived there from time to time with new insights. Others get flagged up by copyright holders under DMCA takedown threats or bumped by spambots though.
For example on retro computing boards it makes me so happy when someone bumps a 5 year old thread to share new details, benchmarks, etc. about some card or motherboard where the ancient thread is first thing that appears in search results.
Remember Shoutboxes? :)
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 more effective. Second, Pi-hole is kind of heavy for what it does; you can accomplish the same by loading a blacklist directly to the config file of Unbound/Bind/Dnsmasq.
But for my use case, I like having the Pihole UI to see the charts and it's nice for temporarily unblocking one domain, etc.
Here is an excellent alternative to running Pihole that I've used before: https://www.geoghegan.ca/unbound-adblock.html
Damn. I played around with PiHole years ago on an original Raspberry Pi Model B, and kinda forgot about it--it broke some stuff, and most of my connected devices could run their own adblocker.
Only in the past year did I finally buy a "Smart" TV and leverage its existing GoogleTV apps, because I got tired of trying to maintain my aging Kodi Box. I should probably setup PiHole anew and point my Smart TV's DNS at it...
Agree! I regret letting my Vizio TV stay online for as long as I did.
At first it was fine, and I did get a UI refresh a couple years back that was OK.
But then some update caused it to start ripping control away from whatever my last HDMI input was so it could show me ads (which fails). Even though it's perma-offline now, it still messes with my inputs sometimes.
There are easy ways to fix that at the router level, but DNS-over-HTTPS clowns ruined this.
Yes! This is easy to do on OpenBSD as well, though it's called "redirect" instead of "DNAT":
Overall, it's just easier not to connect "smart" devices to the Internet at all. I prefer to use a Linux HTPC instead of a smart TV for example. It is completely under my control and I am not restricted to apps approved by Apple or Google, asked to log into anything or to accept ever-changing terms and conditions.
On my phone I do both: I use AdGuard DNS to block ads system-wide, and Vivaldi's built-in ad blocker to block those ads that still slip through.
A lot of nerds also have some form of private overlay network with default DNS to adguard or pihole or similar, again, making for identical adblock experience on all platforms.
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 advantange over Github issue/discussion based comment plugins:
1. All data is stored a .git
2. no login of any sort
Github OAuth login might leak all your repo data along with your `access_token` to the plugin provider.
The `git push` works for any remote. You can choose github/gitlab or whatever.
You now have a direct way for users to insert data into your repo, which can include illegal things. And if you're required to delete it later, you'll be forced to edit your git history.
But if everyone behaves, it's a great solution
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.
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!
Yes, and spam is also a huge concern.
I plan to mitigate by adding "Pull Request" style moderation next.
And you can switch to a private repo
For mass moderation, just git clone, grep the lines, sed them out, and `git push -f`
Remember the use case is for static generated personal blogs.
I'd argue it's even quicker than, say a paginated bloated megabytes javascript rendered single-page application moderation system.
In case of comments you don't like, just delete the line and `git commit`
to erase the history entirely, use `git cherry-pick` and `git push -f`
It might be a nightmare for people not familiar with `git`, but for folks running a static blog like Hugo, they use lots of shell commands anyway.
They certainly do, but for they same reason why people chose static site generators like Hugo over Wordpress, I'd like complete control of full data.
The good value of static-hosted comments is that you `git clone` for backup and `git push` for redudency.
I also dislike managing DBs. Think of all those mess with backups, migrations, imports, exports, difference between mysql/pg/sqlite/d1. Tons of operating cost just for the sake of few blog comments
It's just a bunch of .jsonl files, the last resort is direct inline those .jsonl into .html files when generating
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)
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.
Sending an e-mail is not the same thing, it's like Youtube removing the unlike button count and instead sending the info only to the creator.
This doesn't apply to your blog, but I've seen low quality or misleading content without a possibility to comment. Even worse: scams that include a fake 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: http://www.goodmath.org/blog/2011/02/10/e-e-escultura-and-th...
I really do not believe that blog would be better by not having comments enabled.
Check this out: https://i.imgur.com/ZOBUNBg.png
The size of it, above the comments (and under as well of course). That is madness.
I'll have to check some of the alternative listed in here. I could just code it but I really don't want to deal with spam and moderation... Or maybe I'll remove comments altogether.
[0] https://abx.funkybits.fr/
Still a cool comments product and I still use it on my blog.
https://cactus.chat/
[1] https://giscus.app/
Still, since we do not get that many comments these days, I’ll probably postpone it and just provide a static render of existing / historical comments which does have value for archival and discussion purposes.
I’ve also found HN to be a great commenting platform too.
¹ https://jszym.com/blog/mastodon_blog_comments/
² https://jan.wildeboer.net/2023/02/Jekyll-Mastodon-Comments/
³ https://carlschwan.eu/2020/12/29/adding-comments-to-your-sta...
https://carlschwan.eu/2020/12/29/adding-comments-to-your-sta...
have been pleasant.
https://kau.sh/blog/bluesky-comments-for-hugo/
I like my implementation cause it blends really well with the blog making it looks almost native.
transferring the burden of maintenance - curation to a social media platform (and a slightly more open one to boot) has been a complete win.
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 embedded in the blog page).
For small websites a good start is to get comments by email, publishing only the ones that adds value to the article or conversation. Why? Because we have lots of noise done by social media. A way of curating the comments increase the quality of the website.
If the website gets traction, than it's good to consider a tool to facilitate the commenting and moderation.
Bravo for this banger of a new word.
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.
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?)
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. Bots, drivel, linkbacks, social media, stupid laws, and an aversion to independence - we have what we have today. Large platforms that trick humans into use because they have the largest arenas.
Also, the author’s experience with seeing scammy ads on their site doesn’t mean that others are seeing the same ads. Because they ran ad-free for so long it’s possible their token in the AdTech ecosystem is stale in which case it hasn’t put it into any buckets yet. Ergo, you get the smoking/drinking/scamming/doesn’t fit category.
A “token” is a device or ident signature used to identify a viewer or user so that they can tabulate impressions, build personas, categorize your shopping habits, track the sites you visit, link your token with others in your proximity
Well, so they may see worse ads.
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.
Here is another one https://docs.coralproject.net/
I'm not sure it's worth the upkeep to have comments. Seems that mostly spammers comment, and rarely real people. I just wanted a low-maintenance commenting system and Commento seemed to work decently at the time. I'm now noticing it's showing some CORS error, so I guess comments have been broken on my site for some time, doh...
Instead, I went with a tight solution that minimized 3rd party interaction: GitHub Discussions leveraged using the Giscus app (https://jasoneckert.github.io/myblog/github-discussions-blog...). You have to have a GitHub account to post comments using this method, which I like because my blog is geared to those that would have that.
That grants people an easy way to discuss content and to check any prior discussion, if any.
Something like https://lists.sr.ht/~shugyousha/public-inbox for example.
Posts could show both under the article (like "normal" comments) and for aggregated discussion on Bluesky / any other app that renders Bluesky posts.
And you'd get "free" moderation (at least for basic stuff) from the Bluesky mod team.
I was inspired by that and wrote up my experience integrating with my Hugo based blog here: https://brojonat.com/posts/bluesky-hugo-comments/
I would totally agree that this makes your site look like an armpit of the internet, but also - there was a way to figure out that this would happen ahead of time. Google Ads last I checked weren't nearly as bad, but even these were prone to scams and malvertising campaigns on sites I've frequented.
Example:https://dalevross.rosssquared.org/blog/2013/08/16/pi-lovin.h...
If anyone is able to confirm that they're not seeing ads either, I would be grateful.
Does anyone have advice for handling blog subscriptions? I'm thinking of switching to Kit, which has a free tier that seems reasonable. Paid services seem to start at $50/month, which is way more than I want to spend. (Originally, Blogger handled subscriptions automatically, but Google removed that feature.)
I made Bluniversal Comments partly for this, but there are other Bluesky-based solutions out there if you prefer.
Writing a comment that categorizes comments as a literary genre and then immediately argues that comments are useless is some meta level deconstruction. Kudos.
Comment systems are useful/effective when someone is paying the full cost of moderation.
https://github.com/delirehberi/hugo2nostr
I'll have to dive in sometime. This interests me in a way that Mastodon and BlueSky do not.
But, the solution I've been looking for/prototyping is one that lets people comment from the Fadiverse, so it will also double as a feed. Nothing to show yet, but one-day maybe.
Having written my own multiple times and used several others before disqus I’m unlikely to switch unless the new thing is super compelling and I believe it will stick around.
Spam is hard to deal with. Akismet fails miserably for me. disqus has the fact they can track users across sites. Spam one site and you’re off all sites.
But that's a temporary solution.
Sure, I can code an in house comment system within an hour, but the real work is to combat spam. Because people (and now also disqus) suck.
We need to ruthlessly audit third party deps for privacy, perf, spam etc.
The barrier to entry is a feature and not a bug.
One alternative I've come across while researching this was https://cusdis.com/ - has anyone tried this?
Also the project does not seem active.
They could be turned off at the time but only on a case-by-case basis. In the end, I got rid of Disqus.
There is FOSS option built on nostr you could explore called nocomment. https://github.com/fiatjaf/nocomment.
License is public domain.
https://www.splitbrain.org/blog/2025-03/26-meh_another_comme...
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.
You'll also notice that I use WebMentions to import those 3rd party discussions (or links to them) into my blog.
That way users aren't subject to the advertising on platform A, the poor moderation on platform B, or the difficulty of even finding the comments on platform C.
I'm trying Mastodon comments on my own blog, that I'm not posting here because it isn't really ready, from my own Mastodon account. I'd never even consider public comments anymore, it just seems like inviting trouble.
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.
Yes. I think Disqus is trying to get money from the long tail of blogs that enabled Disqus in the past and never bothered to look up for the policy changes. I am sure they started with small, non-invasive ads and eventually got bigger until we get in the situation that we are today.
So even if someone enabled Disqus in the past because they seemed a reasonable system a few years ago, their blogs are now an ad farm and the original owner may have zero idea since it is a blog they abandoned years ago. Heck, my old Wordpress blog that I don't even remember the password is probably an ad field nowadays that is probably generating pennies for one of those companies.
https://jasoneckert.github.io/myblog/github-discussions-blog...
Which means complete control of all your github account.
Why not keep the original title? Rhetorical question.
Either pay the money they ask if it's worth having comments, or build your own system.
Online "targeted" ads eliminated the gatekeeper in favour of a free-for-all where shady companies are encouraged to hide their identities so they can simply advertise under a different name when their ad account eventually gets banned. 20 years ago I was seeing scam ads for "mail order brides", "free iPods" and "legal buds", today its crypto scams , political spam and misinformation.
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-...
No lock-in, except for GitHub, I suppose.
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.
Or just leave it. Nobody needs to comment on blog posts, really. :D
I liked the comments, they were infrequent and OK, but I'm not going to add an alternative, maybe in the future when I feel like it.
It is revolting how riddled the default web view is with advertisement and that the only way to browse sanely, you must install an adblocker.
Ironically, if you look at the screenshot, just below the comments' section, you will read: 'Subscribe', 'Privacy' and 'Do Not Sell My Data'. Seriously?! You are already torturing my visitors by throwing many ads, at the same time, on their faces. How can I trust you?
Also, what drives me cra*y the most about online Ads is that they are random and have no relation with the content of the page I am looking at. Oftentimes, they went extremely far by showing what I consider near explicit content.
Utterance.es is GitHub issues backed comments, which is an inherent barrier to commenting, but YMMV if that's an actual problem (generally the value of unbarred comment sections is abysmal). Like remark42, it's open source, but you're relying on a third party's servers.
[0]: https://github.com/umputun/remark42
[1]: https://utteranc.es/
Perhaps there should be an open source alternative. Why isn’t there one by now?
* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45370971
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.
You probably mean a PHP that can be hosted for cheap. But then, you end up with a Wordpress nightmare, even more spam and security issues.
I had a pretty popular blog and some posts gathered hundreds of useful comments. But I was so tired of fighting spam that I threw it all away and started using Hugo too, without comments.