Disqus Goes Full Social Justice Warrior

BY Herschel Smith
7 years, 9 months ago

Currently this web site has around 4300 posts and over 20,000 comments.  It’s still a small blog, but it pays to have some help in managing comments.  Disqus has been fairly good at that, allowing for threading, response flagging via email, and upvotes.  I’ve also had a fairly easy time with spamming comments and banning users.  I’ve had to ban mostly David Brock type CTR shills and trolls, as well as some Bloomberg trolls who tried to hide their identity.

That’s all about to change.  Disqus has gone full SJW.

Recently, many passionate users have reached out to us regarding instances of hate speech across our network. Language that offends, threatens, or insults groups solely based on race, color, gender, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, or other traits is against our network terms and has no place on the Disqus network. Hate speech is the antithesis of community and an impediment to the type of intellectual discussion that we strive to facilitate.

[ … ]

Currently, we are working on improved tools to help publishers effectively prevent troublesome users from returning to their sites. And as we get smarter about identifying hate speech, we are working on ways to automatically remove it from our network.

And that means exactly what you think it means.  Breitbart is taking a beating in the comments from the other snowflakes in the comments, and there is a fairly robust beatdown from Disqus users back at Disqus as well.

I simply won’t allow another party to moderate comments on my web site, especially a company who apparently joined the ranks of social justice warrior.  Progressives are heavy into the tech sector, from Google to Facebook, to reddit and Disqus.  Very well.  I don’t have to use their product.  Disqus will now find out just how good and necessary they are when they start deleting comments based on anonymous feedback and arbitrary rules.  I suspect this won’t be pretty for them.  Either way, it’s their problem now.

My programmer – who is my oldest son Joshua – hasn’t been able to spend much time on the site recently because he has a full time job as a professional programmer.  This is the impetus we needed to work on that bucket list for the web site.  I’m dumping Disqus.  Look for changes in the near future.

We won’t lose any comments.  He wrote his own WordPress plugin to mirror and sync comments from Disqus as soon as they were sent.  I’ve noticed before the couple of times that Disqus went down that the comments were all still there, just without the framework that Disqus provides.  At the time it was a curiosity to me.  Now I’m truly thankful for the job he did.

I don’t need Disqus.  I do make a pittance from the ads, enough to cover the cost of hosting the web site (I also don’t allow my content to be controlled by BlogSpot or any other independently owned operation, so I pay for hosting on a server of my choosing).  My content is mine, and I won’t turn the keys over to anyone else (except one writer whom I had, liked very much, and who quit on me).  Now, I’ll just have to foot the bill for hosting this web site out of pocket, which is between $30 – $40 per month.  It used to be lower, but when they saw the traffic load and band width I used, they called and said that we needed to renegotiate the contract.  So I did.

Whereas this web site was self sustaining, it will now be a net loss.  But I will not allow Disqus to manage my comments in this manner.  It’s a shame that it has to be this way.  It has happened with so many companies it’s hard to count.  Patagonia entered progressive politics, and that nice winter parka I was going to buy from them will hang on the racks.

I don’t even really care enough about Disqus to watch and see what happens to them.  I used a product, and that product failed because of poor management decisions.  It’s a story as old as the hills, but in this case the appurtenances has all the marks of twenty first century America.

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Comments

  1. On February 10, 2017 at 8:06 am, Marshall Thompson said:

    Herschel,

    How about putting up a paypal link so some us can help you with server expenses?

    Marshall

  2. On February 10, 2017 at 3:17 pm, theBuckWheat said:

    Also allow alternatives currencies like bitcoin.

  3. On February 11, 2017 at 7:23 pm, Randolph Scott said:

    Paypal is starting act like the sjw’s and awhile back started to lock your bank account if they saw fit. I would stay away from paypal, they are not gun friendly nor Constitutional friendly.

  4. On February 10, 2017 at 8:47 am, Fred said:

    Proving, once again, that nothing in life is truly free. Isn’t it nice though, to be a believer in Christ? You know exactly where you stand and that there is no reason, in this instance, to move.

    Mr. Thompson beat me to the ‘donate button’ idea. Most bloggers struggle with this. It’s a personal choice that nobody can make but you.

    Thank you Mr. Smith for this wonderful blog. You, through it, have helped me to grow in faith in the LORD and to stay focused on the fight for our children’s future.

    Now I feel like typing every racist, homophobic, misogynistic, nationalistic, sexist, islamophobic, xenophobic, and every other ‘hateful’ term I can think of just to see if I can be the very first to have a comment banned by disqus. I’ll spare you, but I want to.

  5. On February 10, 2017 at 8:16 pm, Blake said:

    Welp, okay, then.

    I will resume posting as a guest.

  6. On February 11, 2017 at 12:11 am, skhpcola said:

    Disqus jumped the shark years ago when they removed the downvote counter. They do nothing but protect precious Trigglytards from getting their feelz injured.

  7. On February 11, 2017 at 2:17 am, Josh said:

    Oh don’t worry. I’m going to make down votes great again.

  8. On February 11, 2017 at 5:55 am, DAN III said:

    Mr. Smith,

    Is there a way to send you a sawbuck or two ?

  9. On June 24, 2018 at 11:33 am, Dave said:

    I used to like Disqus for websites like gogo anime & other movie pages to leave comments on various movies, series, games ect. It was fun to leave a joke or meme or have a semi serious debate or talk about things, but now I will NEVER use Disqus EVER again unless they drop their New Policy that is Intrusive on the persons commenting on their Forums. Now they want the right to dig through your email & more, all part of the SJW’s fight on “Hate Speech” which is ANYTHING they do not agree with or that upsets their easy triggered feelings. ANYTHING can be called Hate Speech by an SJW & this crap has gone too far. I will not support any more bullying by SJW Political Correctness! I supported the Boycott on the recent Staw Wars films for the same reason & with enough people behind the fans of the franchise got Kathleen Kennedy & her Goon Squad most likely fired as of 06/24/2018. Anyone that values Free Speech will Stop using Disqus & refer to it with it’s more suited name now Disgust!

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You are currently reading "Disqus Goes Full Social Justice Warrior", entry #16564 on The Captain's Journal.

This article is filed under the category(s) Media and was published February 9th, 2017 by Herschel Smith.

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