Disqus: The Ugly Truth

It is often said that there is a fine line between love and hate. Such is the case regarding my torrid affair with the commenting platform Disqus. This internet giant has been touted as the gold standard for the intersection between a website and its readers. It brought in all our wonderful, intelligent, thoughtful commentariat -- or so I thought. But I have come to learn there is a dark side to Disqus and its high time our readers learned that Disqus is up to no good.

First and foremost, Disqus does something that really offends me and should trouble you as well:

“…the people coming to my site, and commenting, were having that data aggregated by Disqus to turn into a profile to be used for placing and selling ad space. That means my visitors – without knowing and without me warning them – were getting tracked while on my site for something Disqus planned to do.”

That’s a wow!  Liberty Nation does not “mine” our reader's data. As folk who believe strongly in liberty and freedom, we should suspect any who do.  This is, quite simply, appalling and invasive.

Next on the hit list is their advertisements, which from time to time just appear out of nowhere on our site. Now we are proud of the fact that we are an ad-free news and analysis website, so this is an absolute non-starter.

Advanced Online Strategy Digital Marketing Director Ken Moody who has worked for Liberty Nation, issued the following statement about Disqus, “During the past three years we have always recommended not using third-party systems like Disqus, they slow your site down, steal your data, then force you into a paying platform.”  That really got my attention. Mr. Moody is one smart dude. If he doesn’t like Disqus, that speaks volumes.

Bye Bye Disqus

For these reasons, Liberty Nation is saying Sayōnara to Disqus. In its place will be a simple, user-friendly system that is already embedded in our Word Press platform. Word Press is simply the software that most people use to publish their websites. Here’s how it works:

• Simply register one time with whatever user name you would like to display

• Add a password and your next comment will appear automatically

So, there you have it my friends: A new and improved way to comment on Liberty Nation without having your privacy invaded, without unwanted ads popping up and without all the hassle of dealing with a third-party site. So please sign in to our new Word Press commenting system and be sure to chime in on our articles early and often. After all, what we do day in and day out is for you.