I have to disagree even as someone relying on Disqus in a few different ways.
First off, they did provide notice. I received an email about this at all the addresses I have an account under. Maybe the the author didn't and that sucks but this seems like an edge case and he is one of the exceptions, not the rule.
Second, you can turn this feature off which brings me to my next point. Even if they do decide to change this can you really blame them? The thing is we're all using the service for free and on top of it they're willing to share revenue with users. I mean we can't just expect every free service to never monetize. Could they have done it differently? Sure but lets not give in to the temptation to be armchair CEOs here and proclaim that we know that a different model would have worked better for everyone. I give Disqus the benefit of the doubt that they did their homework and decided that this is the best way for them to monetize and still do right by their users.
I use Disqus on my personal blog and I use it as part of an app I'm quite passionate about. In my app (link is in my profile) I use Disqus in much the same way Tumblr does where you enter your short name and your public pages can have comments. As someone using them in these two different ways I empathize with the author especially when it comes to my app as I don't want the ads associated with anything I'm personally doing but at the same time I'm not blaming Disqus either. I use them, in both cases, as an alternative to rolling my own. Their platform is far richer than anything I could do so even if they didn't allow opting out its still a win for me.
In the end this outrage is unnecessary. Disqus made no secret of this, reached out to us, provided a way to opt out, and even offered to share revenue! On top of that they're still a totally free service that's offering us value. The author himself says his blog will no longer have comments because of this. Why? I'm sure he can create a commenting system himself but obviously Disqus is delivering value in a way that's pretty tough to replace.
Come on guys, its one thing to not like these ads but to not use Disqus in protest really isn't hurting Disqus as much as it is the person who stops using them in most cases. They definitely acted in good faith on this one and we need to stop acting like every free service on the web owes us the service we want, how we want it, when we want it. This isn't a charity we're talking about here, its a web startup. I follow jaquesm's blog and I agree with most of his thoughts but I can't get behind this one.
I can confirm they contact me as well. On 12/11/12, they sent me an email titled "Growing with Disqus". However,
1) Gmail auto-labeled it as "Promotions", so I didn't read it. Not disqus' fault, just saying.
2) The text is shady; never does it mention specifically that ads will be placed on your site, but dances around the issue before finally saying "if you'd rather not try this feature, you can always turn it off". I likely would not have understood that they were putting ads on my site even if I had given the email a quick read. The subject line sure doesn't help.
I don't mean that I'm outraged or surprised. Just confirming that I received the same email and examining it a bit.
How would you feel if twitter decided to include (for your benefit, of course) a bunch of advertising next to their button after sending you an email about it and defaulting to 'on'. Would that be ok for you or would you feel that that was not what you signed up for when you decided to embed their button tag?
I signed up for a 'comment tag', not for an 'advertising tag'. There is a world of a difference between those two, it changes my blog from a non-commercial one into a commercial one and that is - to me at least - a major shift. On top of that they make it look as if I endorse these links.
To see that happen without my explicit consent is something that is enough to turn me off from that particular service provider because I can apparently not trust them with the responsibility of not altering our relationship in a material way relative to the terms of service of the moment when I signed up for their service.
"The thing is we're all using the service for free and on top of it they're willing to share revenue with users. I mean we can't just expect every free service to never monetize. "
This is one of the problems with some, and mostly the ad based, modern startups, and it seems like most are taking the lead from Facebook here, but the problem is basically that companies create a product that provides value, as Disqus does. As they build it, they know if they do something like put in ads, you wont use it, so they don't put in ads. However, after they have a bunch of users, they realize they need to make money, and therefore change the product to provide less value and put ads in. I feel like a lot of what I see lately seems to imply that we "owe" these companies something(people seem to do the same thing with adblock). I feel no allegiance here, Disqus made a product that people would like, people started using it, and then they took some value away in a fairly shady way. Frankly I wish stuff like this was called out more often. The last thing it needs is defending.
Ads is one thing, Links titled "Recommended content" something completely different. As the OP writes, the way Disqus presents its Ads make them seem like regular content endorsed by the site's editor. And THIS is the total no-go area Disqus just ventured into, without even taking the minimum precursions by defaulting to opt-in. Bye bye Disqus.
You're ignoring the part where this is an utterly unethical way of advertising regardless of how it came about.
Them offering to share revenue makes it stink even worse. Even if it's 100% opt-in, they're basically trying to bribe their users into misleading their visitors.
Terms like "benefit of the doubt" and "good faith" don't apply to companies that do business like that.
I think the main problem is this pervasive habit (not talking only about disqus here) of making controversial modifications (because hey, they must know that a significant part of their users won't like it) and making them the default. I don't think that the OP would have minded so much if the feature was turned off by default. It's like social networks changing their privacy options, and making everything public by default.. but with the option to revert to normal when/if you realize what changed.
As for the second point, the fact that the ad links are similar to all others: that really IS sneaky, however you look at it.
They've been doing this for months, and it's done revenue-sharing style, so if you're getting a lot of comments, you stand a chance of making a couple of bucks through the ads. (If you go to your admin page and click Analytics, you'll see the discovery tab which tells you how much you've made.)
I've gotten multiple emails on it, so it certainly wasn't a bait and switch. A piece from November on the matter:
--
The new Promoted Discovery for Disqus was a major release for publishers like you who are seeking ways to drive business around content, community and conversation. We’re very excited about the results so far. There’s strong engagement in discovered content and excellent flow of new high quality traffic for websites using Disqus. This tells us it’s winning for both publishers and their readers.
We’re only getting started. As we grow, we'll continue to evaluate new opportunities for you to grow and make money with us. We think you’ll like them because, like Promoted Discovery, they will be complementary to the user experience. If you’d rather not try out these features, you can always turn them off in your settings.
The next feature we’re piloting lets you get credit for the traffic you drive to ecommerce sites like Amazon or eBay. If you already do some form of affiliate linking, we do nothing to those existing links. Soon, you may begin to see the impact of these in your reporting dashboard (we’ll be rolling this out slowly over time). Of course, all of this happens seamlessly behind the scenes — the experience for your readers doesn’t change at all. You can learn more by reading this page.
At Disqus, our core philosophy is to remain native to the core user experience and provide the best community experience possible. As always, I welcome your questions and feedback.
Hi Jacques, I’m Daniel from Disqus. Hopefully I can clear some stuff up.
As others in this thread have pointed out, we haven’t really been shy about what we’re doing here. You can see a progress update of how things are going on blog.disqus.com (it’s the second post down as I write this).
We’ve put a lot of effort into being communicative around what we’re doing with discovery and advertising (we call it Promoted Discovery). I don’t think “bait and switch” is accurate in describing how we approached this. It was about a year ago that we started talking publicly about the idea of a revenue-share ad product within Disqus.
As our ideas matured, we started sharing those details with our userbase. This was about 6 months ago. As with many of the things we do, Promoted Discovery was rolled out gradually so that we could learn and get better. Along the way, we blogged, sent out emails, and surveyed users. We’ve done half a year of messaging and we’re still not done with the full roll-out. It sucks that our messaging didn’t reach you, but you should know that you can configure how everything works, or opt out completely, on disqus.com/admin/settings. When new users sign up, they also are introduced to what Promoted Discovery is and have the choice to configure it.
As always, we’re learning through feedback. Especially with the product. Are we finished with the advertising product? Not yet — the product has plenty of room to grow and get a lot better. But it’s performing well for many publishers and they’re happy with the revenue that’s coming in. We care about that because our core discussion product is going to get even better because of it.
As a Disqus user, I did receive notification of this and did disable the new "Promoted Discovery" feature. I don't take issue with anything you have just said, except for the part where you call it "Promoted Discovery" instead of advertising.
Let's be real and call it what it is. I think that in this case, the "Promoted Discovery" term is confusing enough to where some users would think that the "Recommended" content really was selected by the content author. Jacques is irate at this, and rightly so. He did not pick the content, and it would appear to some users that he is endorsing things that he isn't.
That's all fun and games until something offensive or politically incorrect gets "Recommended"...
I think the most concerning part of this is hiding it from site owners when they're logged in. This feels like an admission that what you're doing is wrong, and that it needs to be hidden from the people who can turn it off. How did you come to that particular decision?
Hi Daniel, why was it not opt-in? You describe it as a "revenue sharing" program, but did not ask your customers if they wanted to be part of it. You assumed their silence meant that they did.
All I can say to Disqus is a big "fuck you" and I will never be back. At least try to sell me something. Right now, it's either whore out my blog to your advertisers or pay $999 for VIP service. The first rule of making a product is to actually sell something. I'd pay $10 or $20 a month to keep the whoring off my blog but there's no option for that.
You forget to address (or clear up) the part where you make it seem as if the author of the blog endorses/recommends your advertising links. Because doing that without explicit consent is wrong. Nor does an announcement "unless you stop us, we're going to use your voice to endorse our advertisers' links" make it right.
The latter is almost funny to consider, except for the bit where it actually happened.
(btw I did upvote you because I think it's important to not sink Disqus' reply)
Is it safe to assume that if I'm a paying customer I don't have to worry about ads / promoted discovery showing up on my site, or is it on (opt-out) by default?
"We’ve put a lot of effort into being communicative around what we’re doing with discovery and advertising (we call it Promoted Discovery)."
This sentence is a microcosm of exactly what's going on. This is not a sentence a normal person would write, nor would a normal person read it and understand.
The excerpts from the "notice" sent out, found above, tell the rest of the story.
When people use weaselly phrasing like "being communicative around what we're doing" and emails with innocuous and deadly boring subject lines like "Growing with Disqus" with surprise-now-you're-advertising-for-us bombs inside, what conclusion can we draw?
Looks like deliberate obfuscation to me.
And as Douglas Adams wrote, "If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family Anatidae on our hands."
"If you aren't paying for the product/service then you are the product/service being sold."
EDIT: Wow. Why the downvotes?
Do people still not understand this saying? I understand it hurts if/when you get burned but it shouldn't come as a surprise when free services change to something less desirable to monetize their business models. I wouldn't be surprised if they soon offer paid "premium" accounts that don't show ads.
"I think the ‘you are not the user, you are the product’ meme should die. It does a dis-service to the complexity of the situation and it masks some much more serious issues with online monetization models, and online privacy in general."
I suspect people are downvoting you because they understand the saying perfectly, it's just so overused these days that it's to the point of cliche. I don't think anyone doesn't know this, the more interesting conversation is when we talk about what that means to us and what we do about it.
Apart from the other aswers, you may be happy to be the product on an iteration and not on another, and you are free to get angry when people claim they live to make you happy and later you discover that there is a postscript (unless we need to suck).
For example, there are "freemium" business models where the users are segmented by usage level, or by need of additional features. In those models, the "free" users aren't being sold, they're just potential customers and advocates.
Further, this sort of breach of trust isn't limited to free services. There are paid services that start selling advertisements as well.
I completely agree with Jacques that they should have been up front with him about the change, shortformblog suggests that they were with them, so perhaps the blog provider wasn't passing along the email? What ever, its annoying I'm sure to wake up and find you've gone commercial!
As a web site that gets quite a bit of traffic (blekko.com) It is interesting to see both sides of this conversation. As the 'ops' guy I'm always getting cold called/emailed from salespeople for services that will "drive traffic to your web site" and the business model is all very similar. Apparently it works well for these 'service providers.'
To illustrate, lets make up a company, we'll call it "megatraffic" or MT for short. They call me up and they say, "Chuck we can drive millions of page views your way, which you can monetize with this ad-provider network. We'll share revenue 50/50, how cool is that?"
Their other guy calls me up and says "Hey Chuck, we make your site visible to millions, for just a small price per click, we'll put a link to your site on the {hundreds/thousands/millions} of sites in our network."
So MT here sells both ends of the pie, they "become" a sort of ad network by charging folks who contribute links to the customer site. And then they also get 50% of the revenue when someone follows that link and then clicks on an ad at the landing page. That's a pretty sweet deal for them, kind of a lame deal for the patsy who is paying and paying. It is like affiliate marketing where you don't realize right away that you are an affiliate.
Then we read about (and I block from our search engine) on a daily basis organized groups of miscreants who then write code to click through these networks to shake loose the pennies and nickels and quarters that the revenue generates. Given Google's publicly reported ad revenue its easy to see how clever people can create multi-million dollar revenue streams with just a bit of programming, maybe a botnet or two, and a complicit traffic aggregator.
All that money just laying there. First you pick up a few pennies, then a couple of bucks, next thing you know you're working to squeeze every click you can off the page like HuffPo.
The preferred way in which I think plug-in services should work is that they leave older accounts in the state they were when they signed up under some set of terms-of-service and from the moment of changing the TOS can default new sign-ups to have the newer settings enabled.
To me it depends. Something like Disquis where they were giving it away for free I agree. However if it is a for-pay service where you are exchanging money for service, they have some incentive to do right by you, so that your money does not go elsewhere.
Whether it's comments, posts, email, OS, government etc... what you don't control, you don't own. Period.
I enjoy reading comments (despite their negative vibe lately) since there are still some nuggets of gold amid the asinine BS. The deluge of rubbish is really from unmoderated places (news blogs are particularly notorious), but if an admin keeps on top of these, comments are a beautiful thing. Another blog losing comments is a damn shame. It's just one more nail in the coffin for interraction away from the shadow of walled gardens.
I think this was already mentioned elsewhere on HN, but Stallman was right.
So this has been going on earlier than December, at least as early as October, according to this Disqus blog post (which says they started it in August):
So how sure is the OP that he didn't just miss the emails/announcements about it? That said, yes, those links are kind of annoying (especially when unstyled) and can clash with the content.
As much as I want to switch my blog to Octopress, at least I can have a commenting system through Wordpress.
Thank you for reminding me to check if I could finally delete my account - I can and I did. It was impossible to delete accounts due to an "issue" in their system for the last 3 or 4 months and was only fixed within the couple few weeks. I only realized it because I found posts that I'd made anonymously years prior were showing up when I Googled my name. I was horrified. These posts were just one-off comments that served no benefit to being associated with my primary account, but the idea that this was happening to people hoping to stay anonymous in more serious situations was still eye-opening.
I assume that comments left without being logged into a Disqus account (but while passively logged into a Gmail account) were automatically associated with your email and indexed by Google under your real name without any verification on your end. Disqus thinks that this is some sort of beneficial feature rather than a potential breach of privacy, and has you go through and remove these posts after-the-fact. There was no way to disassociate the comments from my account than to delete them, so while I didn't actually want to remove the comments from the contexts they were in, I had no choice.
Today it tells you that there are "guest comments" that are associated with your email address, and asks if you'd like to merge them, but doesn't show you what they are nor is there an option to delete them before merging. I don't want to merge comments into my account that I can't even see first, and I'd much rather delete my account entirely than risk having them continue to be associated with my namesake.
These things, in addition to these suggested ads which are disguised as posts also written or endorsed by the author and in my experience totally unrelated if not straight-up offensive (saw a recommended link on a serious blog promoting an article on some famous floozy's nip slip) have completely put me off to using Disqus and commenting on sites that utilize it. Whether or not they are deliberately trying to be shady or if their UX just sucks, it isn't worth it to me.
The real problem is the tech world's lack of an ability/strategy to come up with a sustainable revenue generating business model before hooking (crack-like) millions of users to their service.
Users get used to these free world-class services and when the companies inevitably have to come up with a way to stop flushing investor money down the toilet, users bristle at this.
The bigger problem is this, in a world of free services, how is a service with a sustainable business model supposed to compete? As a user I'd rather use them, but they simply can't exist in this kind of artificially created economic ecosystem (steel dumping comes to mind).
I'd say "buyer beware" but we're not exactly the buyer here are we?
I don't know why you keep calling this stealthy or a bait and switch, I've received emails on this. Also at one point, Disqus was showing me that I was not using the latest "theme/style" and that I should upgrade. And in doing so, it would enable features such as recommended and related content.
Everything I did last year fulfills the requirements of 'opt-in'. I could have left the old style and never received the new features.
Based on my experience with this exact feature, I think the OP mis-read/didn't read the information provided by Disqus.
I didn't notice this happening on my blog either until a friend notified me. When I looked at my blog post, the ad space was just filled with my own blog posts, so I thought it was cool, since users will be referred to other articles I wrote. However, for everyone else, those slots were ads and links to blog posts outside my blog. I disabled the feature right away. I have my own ways of making money without Disqus helping out incognito, thank you very much.
My problem is not that they have this feature, and I don't really care whether they sent out an email or not. My problem is that it was opt-out, not opt-in, from the start, and they tried to deceive bloggers further by making sure we don't see the ads when we look at our own pages. I chose disqus over facebook comments b/c I can see facebook pulling something like this, but it's definitely disappointing to see from disqus.
> My problem is that it was opt-out, not opt-in, from the start, and they tried to deceive bloggers further by making sure we don't see the ads when we look at our own pages.
If true that is a lot nastier than it seemed so far.
I think Disqus is a great service, and I suspect that this business model will work fine for them, but it's obviously not ideal for everyone.
The economics of hosting comments are interesting -- there is real engineering effort in doing it well; there is product value to some degree of aggregation (spam & bot detection, etc.); the operating expenses are real especially at a Disqus-style scale, but it's not clear that many people would pay even a small subscription fee.
Makes me wonder about the viability of either a federated (not fully p2p, but "local" aggregators), either with or without actual coordination between members of the federation on spammers, e.g.. I'd probably swallow the cost of hosting comments for a few thousand "neighborly" sites, if it meant i had a good commenting system with no commercial interruptions, and be happy to subsidize "good people".
They are obviously not a charity company and its totally understandable the need to make revenue. However, when i sign up for a service and i am asked to link to an external JavaScript file, i expect that file to do as advertised, i can understand the functionality changing a bit without me being notified but not when they do such drastic changes, in that case they should either go with an 'opt-in' option or disable there commenting system until i approve that i am okay with this new functionality. For all those that say 'you can stop using them if you don't like what they do', of course you can but there 'malicious' code still rendered on my webpages right? As an example, what if tomorrow they added 'functionality' to there widget and they started forcing pop ups, would that be okay? There is a certain level of trust needed towards a company that wants me to link some external code on my website that they can change at any given time, actions like that destroy said trust.
Here is the thing, if they done it the proper way i am sure most people wouldn't opt-in, if you are running a website that makes a revenue from ads, you probably already have all the ads your webpage can 'support', if you are running a website as a hobby you probably aren't interested to make any sort of revenue so you would rather not have the ads. Its way more profitable for them to just force there way in, specially if they see that there users don't care.
Disqus is in the unenviable position of having a freemium product that everyone wants but nobody is willing to pay for. Their freemium model provides commenting services with the expectation that value-added features or the need for an SLA would compel site owners to upgrade to paid plans in order to use those features. Problem is, customers that are large and important enough to require an SLA are also large and important enough to be able to afford a custom solution.
This leaves them with the options of transitioning the business model to something that people are willing to pay for, or finding ways to extract value from their free customers.
I know of one other commenting widget provider who got into this exact same morass, but they have opted to leverage the communities that their customers have created to engage in "influencer marketing", where the site owner cooperates with the commenting widget provider to have an above-board "sponsored conversation" with a third party company.
Since it's unlikely that Disqus will be able to successfully integrate advertisements into commenting feeds in a way that doesn't damage their relationships with site owners, an approach like this shifts the value-extraction machinery away from a site's commenters, who Disqus technically has no claim on, and provides an avenue for mutual profit with the site owners, who have an existing relationship with Disqus.
@jacquesm I felt the same way and got mad at disqus when I saw they did that without my consent. I turned off the "feature" and started looking for alternatives.
Vanilla Forums looked like it provides a neat option to serve the same purpose (embedded comments hosted elsewhere)
I came here to say the same thing. It seems to have the same functionality except your users have to signup either on your site or through some oauth I believe.
Interesting. I was wondering what is going on with the flagging of this article, it is much lower in the ranking than you'd expect looking at the age and the accrued points. It took me a while to find that disqus is a YC company, so that's why there are so many flags.
116 comments and not one mention of the substrings "ethic" or "moral".
Yes, Disqus is free. Yes, their ToS permit this. But their actions are ethically dubious. I wish we, as a community focused on building startups, held ourselves and our peers to a higher moral standard.
[+] [-] bpatrianakos|13 years ago|reply
First off, they did provide notice. I received an email about this at all the addresses I have an account under. Maybe the the author didn't and that sucks but this seems like an edge case and he is one of the exceptions, not the rule.
Second, you can turn this feature off which brings me to my next point. Even if they do decide to change this can you really blame them? The thing is we're all using the service for free and on top of it they're willing to share revenue with users. I mean we can't just expect every free service to never monetize. Could they have done it differently? Sure but lets not give in to the temptation to be armchair CEOs here and proclaim that we know that a different model would have worked better for everyone. I give Disqus the benefit of the doubt that they did their homework and decided that this is the best way for them to monetize and still do right by their users.
I use Disqus on my personal blog and I use it as part of an app I'm quite passionate about. In my app (link is in my profile) I use Disqus in much the same way Tumblr does where you enter your short name and your public pages can have comments. As someone using them in these two different ways I empathize with the author especially when it comes to my app as I don't want the ads associated with anything I'm personally doing but at the same time I'm not blaming Disqus either. I use them, in both cases, as an alternative to rolling my own. Their platform is far richer than anything I could do so even if they didn't allow opting out its still a win for me.
In the end this outrage is unnecessary. Disqus made no secret of this, reached out to us, provided a way to opt out, and even offered to share revenue! On top of that they're still a totally free service that's offering us value. The author himself says his blog will no longer have comments because of this. Why? I'm sure he can create a commenting system himself but obviously Disqus is delivering value in a way that's pretty tough to replace.
Come on guys, its one thing to not like these ads but to not use Disqus in protest really isn't hurting Disqus as much as it is the person who stops using them in most cases. They definitely acted in good faith on this one and we need to stop acting like every free service on the web owes us the service we want, how we want it, when we want it. This isn't a charity we're talking about here, its a web startup. I follow jaquesm's blog and I agree with most of his thoughts but I can't get behind this one.
[+] [-] llimllib|13 years ago|reply
I can confirm they contact me as well. On 12/11/12, they sent me an email titled "Growing with Disqus". However,
1) Gmail auto-labeled it as "Promotions", so I didn't read it. Not disqus' fault, just saying.
2) The text is shady; never does it mention specifically that ads will be placed on your site, but dances around the issue before finally saying "if you'd rather not try this feature, you can always turn it off". I likely would not have understood that they were putting ads on my site even if I had given the email a quick read. The subject line sure doesn't help.
I don't mean that I'm outraged or surprised. Just confirming that I received the same email and examining it a bit.
[+] [-] jacquesm|13 years ago|reply
I signed up for a 'comment tag', not for an 'advertising tag'. There is a world of a difference between those two, it changes my blog from a non-commercial one into a commercial one and that is - to me at least - a major shift. On top of that they make it look as if I endorse these links.
To see that happen without my explicit consent is something that is enough to turn me off from that particular service provider because I can apparently not trust them with the responsibility of not altering our relationship in a material way relative to the terms of service of the moment when I signed up for their service.
[+] [-] ryguytilidie|13 years ago|reply
This is one of the problems with some, and mostly the ad based, modern startups, and it seems like most are taking the lead from Facebook here, but the problem is basically that companies create a product that provides value, as Disqus does. As they build it, they know if they do something like put in ads, you wont use it, so they don't put in ads. However, after they have a bunch of users, they realize they need to make money, and therefore change the product to provide less value and put ads in. I feel like a lot of what I see lately seems to imply that we "owe" these companies something(people seem to do the same thing with adblock). I feel no allegiance here, Disqus made a product that people would like, people started using it, and then they took some value away in a fairly shady way. Frankly I wish stuff like this was called out more often. The last thing it needs is defending.
[+] [-] gaunab|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] onemorepassword|13 years ago|reply
Them offering to share revenue makes it stink even worse. Even if it's 100% opt-in, they're basically trying to bribe their users into misleading their visitors.
Terms like "benefit of the doubt" and "good faith" don't apply to companies that do business like that.
[+] [-] abraxasz|13 years ago|reply
As for the second point, the fact that the ad links are similar to all others: that really IS sneaky, however you look at it.
[+] [-] shortformblog|13 years ago|reply
I've gotten multiple emails on it, so it certainly wasn't a bait and switch. A piece from November on the matter:
--
The new Promoted Discovery for Disqus was a major release for publishers like you who are seeking ways to drive business around content, community and conversation. We’re very excited about the results so far. There’s strong engagement in discovered content and excellent flow of new high quality traffic for websites using Disqus. This tells us it’s winning for both publishers and their readers.
We’re only getting started. As we grow, we'll continue to evaluate new opportunities for you to grow and make money with us. We think you’ll like them because, like Promoted Discovery, they will be complementary to the user experience. If you’d rather not try out these features, you can always turn them off in your settings.
The next feature we’re piloting lets you get credit for the traffic you drive to ecommerce sites like Amazon or eBay. If you already do some form of affiliate linking, we do nothing to those existing links. Soon, you may begin to see the impact of these in your reporting dashboard (we’ll be rolling this out slowly over time). Of course, all of this happens seamlessly behind the scenes — the experience for your readers doesn’t change at all. You can learn more by reading this page.
At Disqus, our core philosophy is to remain native to the core user experience and provide the best community experience possible. As always, I welcome your questions and feedback.
[+] [-] danielha|13 years ago|reply
As others in this thread have pointed out, we haven’t really been shy about what we’re doing here. You can see a progress update of how things are going on blog.disqus.com (it’s the second post down as I write this).
We’ve put a lot of effort into being communicative around what we’re doing with discovery and advertising (we call it Promoted Discovery). I don’t think “bait and switch” is accurate in describing how we approached this. It was about a year ago that we started talking publicly about the idea of a revenue-share ad product within Disqus.
As our ideas matured, we started sharing those details with our userbase. This was about 6 months ago. As with many of the things we do, Promoted Discovery was rolled out gradually so that we could learn and get better. Along the way, we blogged, sent out emails, and surveyed users. We’ve done half a year of messaging and we’re still not done with the full roll-out. It sucks that our messaging didn’t reach you, but you should know that you can configure how everything works, or opt out completely, on disqus.com/admin/settings. When new users sign up, they also are introduced to what Promoted Discovery is and have the choice to configure it.
As always, we’re learning through feedback. Especially with the product. Are we finished with the advertising product? Not yet — the product has plenty of room to grow and get a lot better. But it’s performing well for many publishers and they’re happy with the revenue that’s coming in. We care about that because our core discussion product is going to get even better because of it.
[+] [-] gtaylor|13 years ago|reply
Let's be real and call it what it is. I think that in this case, the "Promoted Discovery" term is confusing enough to where some users would think that the "Recommended" content really was selected by the content author. Jacques is irate at this, and rightly so. He did not pick the content, and it would appear to some users that he is endorsing things that he isn't.
That's all fun and games until something offensive or politically incorrect gets "Recommended"...
[+] [-] jacquesm|13 years ago|reply
On another note do you realize that you make it seem as if I endorse stealth advertising?
Please quit the marketing speak, it makes me itchy.
And I have opted out, as the blog post details.
[+] [-] thedufer|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MatthewPhillips|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] callahad|13 years ago|reply
Oh, come on, you guys are better than this.
[+] [-] homosaur|13 years ago|reply
Good day sir.
[+] [-] tripzilch|13 years ago|reply
The latter is almost funny to consider, except for the bit where it actually happened.
(btw I did upvote you because I think it's important to not sink Disqus' reply)
[+] [-] rapind|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ahoyhere|13 years ago|reply
This sentence is a microcosm of exactly what's going on. This is not a sentence a normal person would write, nor would a normal person read it and understand.
The excerpts from the "notice" sent out, found above, tell the rest of the story.
When people use weaselly phrasing like "being communicative around what we're doing" and emails with innocuous and deadly boring subject lines like "Growing with Disqus" with surprise-now-you're-advertising-for-us bombs inside, what conclusion can we draw?
Looks like deliberate obfuscation to me.
And as Douglas Adams wrote, "If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family Anatidae on our hands."
[+] [-] jrs235|13 years ago|reply
EDIT: Wow. Why the downvotes?
Do people still not understand this saying? I understand it hurts if/when you get burned but it shouldn't come as a surprise when free services change to something less desirable to monetize their business models. I wouldn't be surprised if they soon offer paid "premium" accounts that don't show ads.
[+] [-] mseebach|13 years ago|reply
http://jacquesmattheij.com/you-are-not-the-customer-you-are-...
Meta: I went googling for this article, know I'd read it, but not where. I found the coincidence of the author quite amusing.
[+] [-] tarr11|13 years ago|reply
This quote has become a cliche and doesn't add that much to the conversation.
[+] [-] untog|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ajasmin|13 years ago|reply
I don't know if these are ads free though.
[+] [-] pfortuny|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kevinpet|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zeeg|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rscale|13 years ago|reply
For example, there are "freemium" business models where the users are segmented by usage level, or by need of additional features. In those models, the "free" users aren't being sold, they're just potential customers and advocates.
Further, this sort of breach of trust isn't limited to free services. There are paid services that start selling advertisements as well.
[+] [-] ChuckMcM|13 years ago|reply
As a web site that gets quite a bit of traffic (blekko.com) It is interesting to see both sides of this conversation. As the 'ops' guy I'm always getting cold called/emailed from salespeople for services that will "drive traffic to your web site" and the business model is all very similar. Apparently it works well for these 'service providers.'
To illustrate, lets make up a company, we'll call it "megatraffic" or MT for short. They call me up and they say, "Chuck we can drive millions of page views your way, which you can monetize with this ad-provider network. We'll share revenue 50/50, how cool is that?"
Their other guy calls me up and says "Hey Chuck, we make your site visible to millions, for just a small price per click, we'll put a link to your site on the {hundreds/thousands/millions} of sites in our network."
So MT here sells both ends of the pie, they "become" a sort of ad network by charging folks who contribute links to the customer site. And then they also get 50% of the revenue when someone follows that link and then clicks on an ad at the landing page. That's a pretty sweet deal for them, kind of a lame deal for the patsy who is paying and paying. It is like affiliate marketing where you don't realize right away that you are an affiliate.
Then we read about (and I block from our search engine) on a daily basis organized groups of miscreants who then write code to click through these networks to shake loose the pennies and nickels and quarters that the revenue generates. Given Google's publicly reported ad revenue its easy to see how clever people can create multi-million dollar revenue streams with just a bit of programming, maybe a botnet or two, and a complicit traffic aggregator.
All that money just laying there. First you pick up a few pennies, then a couple of bucks, next thing you know you're working to squeeze every click you can off the page like HuffPo.
[+] [-] jacquesm|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ig1|13 years ago|reply
In both Europe and the US there is a requirement for any advertisements to be clearly marked as advertisements and separated from other content.
For the US see FTC 16 CFR Part 255 (Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising):
http://ftc.gov/os/2009/10/091005revisedendorsementguides.pdf
For the UK the ASA CAP rules:
http://www.asa.org.uk/Rulings/Adjudications/Display-Code.asp...
[+] [-] k3n|13 years ago|reply
They do not work for you, they do not answer to you, and their motives are usually quite different than yours.
Thus, don't be surprised when they act to satisfy those motives in ways that you may not entirely agree with.
[+] [-] runevault|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] WA|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eksith|13 years ago|reply
I enjoy reading comments (despite their negative vibe lately) since there are still some nuggets of gold amid the asinine BS. The deluge of rubbish is really from unmoderated places (news blogs are particularly notorious), but if an admin keeps on top of these, comments are a beautiful thing. Another blog losing comments is a damn shame. It's just one more nail in the coffin for interraction away from the shadow of walled gardens.
I think this was already mentioned elsewhere on HN, but Stallman was right.
[+] [-] danso|13 years ago|reply
http://blog.disqus.com/post/32684337804/expanding-promoted-d...
So how sure is the OP that he didn't just miss the emails/announcements about it? That said, yes, those links are kind of annoying (especially when unstyled) and can clash with the content.
As much as I want to switch my blog to Octopress, at least I can have a commenting system through Wordpress.
[+] [-] azundo|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mnicole|13 years ago|reply
I assume that comments left without being logged into a Disqus account (but while passively logged into a Gmail account) were automatically associated with your email and indexed by Google under your real name without any verification on your end. Disqus thinks that this is some sort of beneficial feature rather than a potential breach of privacy, and has you go through and remove these posts after-the-fact. There was no way to disassociate the comments from my account than to delete them, so while I didn't actually want to remove the comments from the contexts they were in, I had no choice.
Today it tells you that there are "guest comments" that are associated with your email address, and asks if you'd like to merge them, but doesn't show you what they are nor is there an option to delete them before merging. I don't want to merge comments into my account that I can't even see first, and I'd much rather delete my account entirely than risk having them continue to be associated with my namesake.
These things, in addition to these suggested ads which are disguised as posts also written or endorsed by the author and in my experience totally unrelated if not straight-up offensive (saw a recommended link on a serious blog promoting an article on some famous floozy's nip slip) have completely put me off to using Disqus and commenting on sites that utilize it. Whether or not they are deliberately trying to be shady or if their UX just sucks, it isn't worth it to me.
[+] [-] bane|13 years ago|reply
Users get used to these free world-class services and when the companies inevitably have to come up with a way to stop flushing investor money down the toilet, users bristle at this.
The bigger problem is this, in a world of free services, how is a service with a sustainable business model supposed to compete? As a user I'd rather use them, but they simply can't exist in this kind of artificially created economic ecosystem (steel dumping comes to mind).
I'd say "buyer beware" but we're not exactly the buyer here are we?
[+] [-] boundlessdreamz|13 years ago|reply
Both these were turned on by default. Terrible move. I understand that they have to monetize but turning these on by default is not cool.
[+] [-] traeblain|13 years ago|reply
Everything I did last year fulfills the requirements of 'opt-in'. I could have left the old style and never received the new features.
Based on my experience with this exact feature, I think the OP mis-read/didn't read the information provided by Disqus.
[+] [-] jacquesm|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] natasham25|13 years ago|reply
My problem is not that they have this feature, and I don't really care whether they sent out an email or not. My problem is that it was opt-out, not opt-in, from the start, and they tried to deceive bloggers further by making sure we don't see the ads when we look at our own pages. I chose disqus over facebook comments b/c I can see facebook pulling something like this, but it's definitely disappointing to see from disqus.
[+] [-] jacquesm|13 years ago|reply
If true that is a lot nastier than it seemed so far.
[+] [-] daa|13 years ago|reply
The economics of hosting comments are interesting -- there is real engineering effort in doing it well; there is product value to some degree of aggregation (spam & bot detection, etc.); the operating expenses are real especially at a Disqus-style scale, but it's not clear that many people would pay even a small subscription fee.
Makes me wonder about the viability of either a federated (not fully p2p, but "local" aggregators), either with or without actual coordination between members of the federation on spammers, e.g.. I'd probably swallow the cost of hosting comments for a few thousand "neighborly" sites, if it meant i had a good commenting system with no commercial interruptions, and be happy to subsidize "good people".
[+] [-] glfomfn|13 years ago|reply
Here is the thing, if they done it the proper way i am sure most people wouldn't opt-in, if you are running a website that makes a revenue from ads, you probably already have all the ads your webpage can 'support', if you are running a website as a hobby you probably aren't interested to make any sort of revenue so you would rather not have the ads. Its way more profitable for them to just force there way in, specially if they see that there users don't care.
[+] [-] condiment|13 years ago|reply
This leaves them with the options of transitioning the business model to something that people are willing to pay for, or finding ways to extract value from their free customers.
I know of one other commenting widget provider who got into this exact same morass, but they have opted to leverage the communities that their customers have created to engage in "influencer marketing", where the site owner cooperates with the commenting widget provider to have an above-board "sponsored conversation" with a third party company.
Since it's unlikely that Disqus will be able to successfully integrate advertisements into commenting feeds in a way that doesn't damage their relationships with site owners, an approach like this shifts the value-extraction machinery away from a site's commenters, who Disqus technically has no claim on, and provides an avenue for mutual profit with the site owners, who have an existing relationship with Disqus.
[+] [-] sudonim|13 years ago|reply
Vanilla Forums looked like it provides a neat option to serve the same purpose (embedded comments hosted elsewhere)
http://vanillaforums.com/tour/turn-drive-by-blog-commenters-...
I didn't end up setting it up and have just had the disqus nonsense turned off.
[+] [-] sheraz|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jacquesm|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] callahad|13 years ago|reply
Yes, Disqus is free. Yes, their ToS permit this. But their actions are ethically dubious. I wish we, as a community focused on building startups, held ourselves and our peers to a higher moral standard.