I am being blocked from commenting. I can't understand why. My comments are not derogatory in any way.
Related: WARNING! Disqus Reveals Your Personal
Information and Tracks You:
As with other embedded
web widgets, such as
like buttons, the Disqus widget acts as a
web bug which tracks a user's activities, even when they are not logged in, across different sites that use the Disqus commenting system. Information tracked by Disqus, which may be disclosed to third parties, includes
pseudonymous analytics data, such as a user's
IP address, their
web browser version and installed add-ons, and their
referring pages and exit links.
[13] Although these data are referred to by Disqus as "Non-Personally Identifiable Information", such data, when aggregated, has been shown to be usable for
de-anonymizing users.
[11]
Users wishing to avoid these issues may opt to install a privacy-enhancing web browser extension, such as
Ghostery,
NoScript, or
DoNotTrackMe, which identify widgets such as Disqus as web bugs,
[14][15] and allow them to be blocked; this renders Disqus-powered commenting sections unviewable.
Disqus has also been criticized for publishing its registered users' entire commenting histories, along with a list of connected blogs and services, on the publicly viewable user profile pages.
[16] The option to keep profile activity private was later added.
Disqus also was criticized for not giving users control over who follows them. Prior to 2014, any user could follow any other user, but a user being followed could not control or block who was following them, which led to harassment among some users.
[17]
If Disqus shuts down, hundreds of millions of comments would be wiped away from a wide range of sites, since by the very nature of the service, comment content is not being managed locally by sites implementing the service. However, it is possible for site administrators to export all of their comments as an
XML document which can then be ported into other commenting systems.
[18]
In September 2014, it announced an update to its
privacy policy: "Disqus will be using anonymous interest data for content personalization and ad targeting."
[19]
In October 2014, It was revealed that Disqus was utilizing Blackhat
SEO Techniques to publicize their site off the backs of the websites which have Disqus installed.
[20]
2013 security breach
In 2013 a Swedish group called
Researchgruppen obtained and exposed a large number of anonymous Disqus identities through the
application programming interface (API).
[21]The group cooperated with the
Bonnier tabloid
Expressen, who subsequently visited some of the commentators in their homes, confronting them with allegedly
racist,
misogynic, and derogatory sentiments. Researchgruppen, which includes people from the far left, said their database contained millions of comments from Disqus users around the world who are at risk of
de-anonymization.
[22][23][24] In March 2014,
Expressen and Researchgruppen won the
investigative reporting award Guldspaden.
[25]
A delete button that does not delete
The Disqus user interface shows logged-on users an Edit button and a dropdown menu containing a Delete button next to each of their comments. After a simple confirmation, the comment disappears from the page. But, upon refresh, the comment is still there, credited to Guest. Instead of deleting the comment, Disqus "anonymizes" it. The user forever loses the ability to edit or delete the comment, with no warning. To effect true deletion of a comment, the user first has to Edit the comment's content before using the "delete" button. But the user only discovers this situation after the fact. The only recourse is to contact the moderator of the host web site and ask them to delete the commen