That doesn't make any sense. You agreed to their terms of service and now you're complaining because it doesn't match your ideals. Disqus is a great service provided for free, what did you expect?
I did not expect to see myself recommending products and services that I would not ever think of recommending to others and I would not expect to see my site change from non-commercial to commercial and I did not expect to see ads masquerading as regular content.
Terms of service are a fig leaf, how you act is what matters and these actions are not acceptable, especially not for an opt-out that wasn't there when I signed up.
In what way are they not acceptable? They are totally acceptable to me. They provide a great service for free and now they want to monetize it with ads, shocking! I think it's extremely generous and quite remarkable of them to offer both a cut and an option to opt-out. They should be rewarded for that, not blamed. I think the sense of entitlement you have knowing that disqus offered you a great and free service for years and now a way to opt-out or even make money is really disgraceful.
If I offer to paint your house for free, and I do a good job of it but also steal your TV, you actually are entitled to be upset and even call the cops. You can't say, "Hey, I was working for free, and now I want to monetize it with his TV. He's acting so entitled, like I need to ask if it's OK first."
(Obviously I'm not saying they stole anyone's TV, but more extreme examples demonstrate the flaws in an idea better than more subtle ones. The principle of "It's free, so I can do whatever I want and you're being an entitled brat if you object" is simply fallacious.)
Long story short: Working for free does not give you free reign to violate people's trust. Something that isn't OK doesn't suddenly become OK just because you were working for free. If you acted under-handedly, don't be surprised when they call you under-handed on their blog. Being free doesn't immunize you from accusations of under-handedness. It does limit their recourse, but they still have every right to be unhappy.
That's a poor analogy and even you have pointed it out. So using it only creates an unnecessary and invalid connection between stealing and what disqus did.
To be fair, "I can do whatever I want" was actually the condition GP pointed out. As other users have pointed out, this was not a surprise to most of them as they were notified about it.
> they still have every right to be unhappy
Yes They do. But they don't have the right to call the other party malicious.
> That's a poor analogy and even you have pointed it out.
No, I pointed out why it's a perfectly fine analogy ("more extreme examples demonstrate the flaws in an idea better than more subtle ones").
When drawing an analogy, the things need only be similar in the areas being compared. In fact, the more dissimilar they are in other respects, the better, because the whole point of an analogy is to show how similar features behave in different contexts.
For example, if you put forward the proposition, "OJ Simpson is violent because he is black," I might respond by pointing to other well-known black men such as Martin Luther King, who was clearly not violent and is pretty well known as a good person. This does not mean I'm equating OJ Simpson and Martin Luther King in any respect other than their race — in fact, the differences between the men are at the heart of the comparison. They are similar in the aspect being compared (race), but otherwise unlike each other in nearly every way possible.
If any dissimilarity invalidated an analogy in the way you seem to believe, analogy would be altogether impossible because things could only ever be compared to themselves.
> So using it only creates an unnecessary and invalid connection between stealing and what disqus did.
No, it doesn't! I posted a fairly long parenthetical specifically explaining this. Please take the time to read and think about what you've read before replying in the future. It is very annoying to have to explain this over and over.
Again, the difference between the two actions is at the heart of the analogy. Obviously you'll agree that the painter who steals the TV is in the wrong. Nobody thinks it's OK to steal your customer's stuff. The point is that the same justification — he offered a free service, so he is entitled to monetize it in ways that affect you without telling you and you have no right to complain — would appear to apply to the painter's actions. Thus, it is a weak justification. That was my point.
> Yes They do. But they don't have the right to call the other party malicious.
ctrl-F malic -> 0 results
Uh, cool?
I don't think anybody is calling Disqus malicious. Malice is intent to injure someone, and there's no evidence that Disqus was actively seeking to hurt people. I think the accusation here is that the way Disqus has behaved is inconsiderate and sneaky.
You are calling out for slippery slope, if X is acceptable than 1000X must also be. And since 1000X is not, therefore X shouldn't be.
> analogy would be altogether impossible because things could only ever be compared to themselves.
To be honest, I rarely trust analogies as logical statements. They are good for introduction to a concept but they have an inherent bias towards the view of the constructor which may not be visible to the other side in an debate.
The argument you put forward was that 'I do it for free so I can do anything' is fallacious. Yes, it is. Firstly the argument here is 'You agree that I do this for free, the definition of 'this' may change with time and it is entirely my right to do so' is the actual condition.
> It is very annoying to have to explain this over and over
I am sorry I annoyed you, that was not my intent. I did read it but may be I can't read as well as I hoped I did.
> ctrl-F malic -> 0 results. Uh, cool?
While I am at least a little offended by the snark I would assume that it was my mistake that I annoyed you a lot. English is not really my first language so probably my choice of word 'malicious' was out of place, but you are taking things too literally. Disqus has behaved is inconsiderate and sneaky - I am trying to point out that they notified their users and were not trying to hide anything about this.
Honestly, I see no point continuing to annoy you. So I will shut up.
They are not stealth ads as they warned their users a long time ago. I learned about that a few months ago already. You can't blame them for your inability to read your email correctly. Second, you had pretty strong words against disqus calling their decision "bullshit" and encouraging some sort of boycott. All because a free service decided to start making money in order to survive by proposing optional ads with a cut for you to make money on their free service. Sorry, but the sense of entitlement is really too strong here to let go. Had to point it out.
Stealth on the part of misrepresenting their origin as endorsed by the site owner, not stealth as in hidden from the site owner (an understandable mistake, given that both are at issue here).
I am not a disqus user, therefore I have no idea 'recommended content' is their term for paid adverts. I sometimes read jacquesm's site, therefore I could reasonably mistake something[1] with that title to
be recommended by him. He dislikes that this should happen without his explicit opting-in to such a system.
He's allowed to be pissed. Is principle so rare to you that you're mistaking it for entitlement?
Blockbuster, Zappos, and AOL have all been burned by having language in their ToSes to that effect. It's a bad idea if you want any legal cover from your TOS. IANAL, but this guy is and he says
STOP PUTTING CLAUSES INTO YOUR CONTRACTS THAT SAY YOU CAN AMEND THE
CONTRACT AT ANY TIME IN YOUR SOLE DISCRETION BY POSTING THE REVISED
TERMS TO THE WEBSITE
"We may, without prior notice, change the Service;"