I regularly receive messages from readers who tell me that the Disqus comments section is no longer loading in Firefox, or ask why I keep turning the comments section on and off every few months.
This shouldn’t the case; comments are auto-enabled for all articles published on this blog.
If comments are manually disabled on an article (which happens, albeit rarely) you can tell: a comment count will not show in the ‘meta’ area beneath the headline on the article page (as the comment count is an anchor link to the comments section).
So what is causing Disqus comments to not appear under articles viewed in Mozilla Firefox?
Well, the issue is Firefox itself, specifically the Enhanced Tracking Protection (ETP) feature if set to ‘Strict’.
This feature —I won’t be touching on privacy ethics etc here— keeps changing its mind about whether Disqus should be blocked or not. It’s not related to this blog specifically but Disqus in general — Disqus is used by millions of websites so people have noticed!
To quote a discombobulated user opining to Mozilla: “The intermittent returns to proper operations were driving me insane. Hopefully Mozilla will either fix this soon, or give us a way to tweak ETP on tracker level instead of per website.”
Weirdly, other web browsers aren’t affected AIUI, even ones that come with strong tracker blocking tech built-in. I know this because those messages I get? They usually include a line like “…but comments load fine in other browsers I tried”.
If you want to read/make comments on this site (some would say the comment section not loading is a feature not a flaw) you don’t need to disable ETP tracking entirely – you have 2 options:
First option: switch to ‘standard’ tracking protection instead of ‘strict’. This will continue to block the most egregious trackers but will allow Disqus to load. A simple, broad solution.
Second option: create a urlclassifier.trackingSkipURLs(String) with a value of omgubuntu.disqus.com, disqus.com in about:config. This will let Disqus load for this site only (Disqus on other sites will still be blocked).
You can amend the second option for other sites that use Disqus but obviously their Disqus URL will differ. If you’re using ETP you probably won’t want to let Disqus load on all sites universally.
Comment not showing on this post? Lololol
Broaching the topic of privacy will, I imagine, result in some puffed chests and reddened faces in the comments section as folks say how veeeeeryyyy eeeeeeevil I am for using Disqus in the first place. I mean, the platform has an icky rep!
This is why I use Hyvor Talk, a lightweight, privacy-respecting hosted comment service on OMG! Linux but because next-to-no-one reads OMG! Linux 😅 I can afford it. Pricing is traffic-based and to use it here would could cost upwards of $200/m — Disqus costs me $12/m.
Why pay for a comment service at all? Why don’t I just use a self-hosted alternative? A certain four-letter acronym that starts with G and ends in R. Big sites can afford infrastructure engineers, security experts, and compliance gurus, I can’t.
Plus there’s you lot.
When OMG! Ubuntu switched from Disqus to Livefyre for a short period in 2011 readers refused to sign-up for a new account solely to comment on one site as their existing Disqus account works with all websites that use it.
Convenience is king!