A better system would be for advertisers or shows to embed an ultrasonic signal in their shows which say the magic words, which google home/alexa watch out for. Of course, that would only prevent unintentional triggerings, so it wouldn't help in the circumstance where the tv show/advertiser actively wants to annoy you.
I think that is a pretty standard and often needed tactic when starting a forum or community. A community is pretty binary; it's either dead or it isn't, so a it needs to be jumpstarted.
Yep, this is most communities are started. Either through literal fake users (sometimes set up by the staff, sometimes 'imported' from other sites) or by deals and exchanges with other communities (aka you use my site for a bit and I'll do the same on yours).
Not surprising at all that Reddit did the same thing.
As a male in my early twenties, working as a developer I've come to realize that it's just better to not even try to engage in small talk and/or non-work related conversations with female co-workers. I keep it dry and basic. Just last week I had a buddy who was on the phone with his brother and blurted "Bro, she was amazing, then I left her house haha" he was fired the next day because a co-worker overheard his conversation and felt uncomfortable.
I don't even know what to say to this. If your interactions with females are so problematic that you're now afraid to talk to them for fear of repercussions, I seriously doubt "women" are the problem here, which is what you seem to be implying.
As a male in my early twenties, working as a developer, I've come to realise that one of the best ways I can combat sexism in our industry is to treat women normally, and not make special exceptions while working with them.
I wouldn't talk to my male friends, colleagues or brother in the way you've said your colleague did, I think it's demeaning and unpleasant, and I don't think calls of a very personal nature are appropriate to take around work colleagues anyway.
If you're so unprofessional that you can't prevent yourself from having lurid conversations about sex in a workplace with women in earshot around you, then maybe you should be working someplace else, such as a dirty warehouse.
I see this decision as good in the sense that it allows the people hosting comments sections to pay Disqus directly, allowing it to be somewhat more independent.
The more I learn about advertising, the more I find arguments against it compelling. Disqus is a comment system that facilitates the free exchange of ideas. If it relies significantly on ads, then advertisers can begin to police it by threatening to pull sponsorship. This eliminates productive discussion that threatens the interests of advertisers. For instance, advertisers don't like placing ads alongside people that care too much about things, they prefer people to be lightly entertained and in a buying mood. They also don't like placing their ads alongside controversy, as it can negatively impact their brand.
Thus reliance on advertising introduces an interdependency on a relatively small set of giant corporations' goodwill, even for niche activities and will, which when push comes to shove, substitute their positions for the managers' of Disqus. Allowing advertisements to be turned off actually immunized Disqus somewhat from this problem, but having advertisements on everywhere enables it. Allowing users to pay to turn them off probably more than offsets this, though it does impact exceptionally poor users (who, for some reason, are probably more likely to dissent controversially). That could be ameliorated by case-by-case ad waivers if the issue comes up, though it does come close to Disqus endorsing a controversial issue.
Maybe this seems like a minor issue, but Disqus provides a platform for debate, and advertising can act to bound the limits of debate for better or worse. I would prefer if the Disqus managers could act according to their own moral compass when under pressure.
Good decision for the company, but no upside for the user.
I have a strong policy against inline ads, so I may have to reconsider using Disqus for my blog if this goes through. (Unfortunately, the only competiton left is Facebook Comments)
Suggestion : consider disabling comments on the blog.
I noticed that on most technical blogs, the discussions in the comments are either non-existent or an "Awesome post" type response. The real discussion happens on sites like HN, reddit.
There is no real downside to disabling comments altogether on technical blogs. Just leave a PS asking for comments to be sent over email.
The upside to disabling comments : way faster load times and less data transfer per request. Disqus makes like 30 odd requests to load their comments.
Disqus also does some creepy things : when my blog experienced a spike in traffic, Disqus suddenly decides to run ads on my blog without explicit permission.
That's the case with Medium comments, but comments on my site do occasionally point out holes/mistakes in my posts. Removing comments is certainly an option, though.
