Intro
This will be a short and sweet post. As I’m not big on goodbyes.
Disqus started showing ads for their “free” tier comments system a few years back. At the time, the communication they sent out via email, seemed quite laid-back and had the tone of “don’t worry about it, it’s not a big thing”. Which in part lead me to almost forget it happened.
At the time, the disqus comments system looked quite smart and sleek. I remember thinking that the ads system will possibly look smart and sleek too. Which alleviated any worries I had at the time.
WELL…….I’ve just seen the ads, and they look horrific!!!
Apologies
I have a Pihole set up, so ads are blocked on my home network. When I’m out of the house, my phone is connected to a Wireguard VPN which routes my data through my home internet, therefore - getting all the ad-blocking, Pihole goodness.
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.
I used to get a couple of emails from Disqus, letting me know that there’s a new comment on this blog. I haven’t had many of these emails recently, so I decided to disable my adblocker for a few minutes and check out the comments.
There were none, instead I was greeted by some horribly formatted and obviously scammy ads:
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