Commenting Is Restored on the Main Blogs Again... for Now

"Urambo Tauro" (urambotauro)
09/22/2018 at 17:00 • Filed to: kinja, comments, commenting, privacy, internet privacy, ads, cxense

So, I’ve been unable to comment on any of the main blogs for a couple of days. Before contacting Kinja support, I decided to try a bunch of things to help them narrow down what the problem might be...

First, I checked the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! to see if commenting had been disabled from the main sites for whatever reason. They don’t seem to like announcing major changes on any of the main blogs, but I couldn’t find such an announcement there, either. Commenting couldn’t have been completely disabled, because I can still read and comment here on Oppo.

So I started experimenting with the basics. Log out, and back in- no change. Restart browser- no change. Restart my device- still nothing. Cleared cookies and cache- no dice. The main article loads, but nothing appears under each article’s “about the author” box, even after letting it sit for several minutes.

I tried different devices, and different browsers. Win10, Android, Chrome, Firefox, Opera... Everything is up-to-date, but I still couldn’t see any comments or even a reply button.

I was just about to contact Kinja support, when I remembered one more thing- try disabling extensions. And apparently that’s where the problem was. It was my tracker blocker, “Disconnect”.

Look, I’m okay with ads. I understand why they’re necessary. That’s why I never bothered to try more popular extensions like “AdBlock” and “uBlock”. Blocking ads is not my goal here. I just want to do something about all these trackers. That’s what appealed to me about Disconnect. When I discovered it, it was presented primarily as a tracker blocker, and the fact that it blocked certain ads too was just a happy side effect. Does it function the same as the other extensions that I was avoiding on account of their name? Maybe.

Disconnect automatically blocked a bunch of stuff by default, and it made such an amazing difference, that it took a while before I even bothered to start fiddling with any of the settings. First up was unblocking Twitter and Facebook so that I could see embedded postings. Then at some point I noticed that I needed to unblock polldaddy.com in order to see the embedded poll on NCOCP posts. Every once in a while, I would also have to unblock another local news site in order to view their embedded video.

At one point, I also went out of my way to try to bring back unobtrusive banner ads and sidebar ads. Yeah, thos e banners are bigger than they need to be, but it doesn’t bother me too much. I’m okay with letting them through.

Unfortunately, in addition to bringing back those ads, unblocking googlesyndication.com also allowed Kinja’s awful Infinite Scroll to rear its ugly head again . I’d been using Disconnect for so long, that I thought the Kinja team had removed it from most sites . Sorry, not worth it. Infinite Scroll is such a garbage “feature” , I have to re-block those ads again.

Anyway, I was about to give in and start trying other blocker extensions, when I decided to sit down and start unblocking sites one at a time in Disconnect in an effort to find the culprit . It took a few minutes, but I finally found it: something called cxense.com. Unblocking that brought comments back to the main blogs. I don’t know if it was among the list of blocked sites before, or if it’s something new, but something must have changed recently.

I hope unblocking Cxense is worth it. It’s supposedly some sort of “data management platform”, which is an awfully vague term. This stuff is all gobbledygook to me, but I did notice that their website offers their service as a way to “monetize your audience”. Hm. S ounds like a tracker to me. I don’t want to stop commenting on the main blogs, but if I have to...

Funny thing is, Cxense is here on Oppo too. B ut Disconnect is blocking it by default and I’m experiencing none of the aforementioned negative effects on commenting here. Weird.

DISCUSSION (15)

Nom De Plume > Urambo Tauro
09/22/2018 at 17:18

Excellent detective work.

Maxima Speed > Urambo Tauro
09/22/2018 at 17:56

When I can't post I just tend to assume I received a temporary ban :P

facw > Urambo Tauro
09/22/2018 at 18:28

Past few days my ad blocker (a d block plus ) has been going crazy on the main page sometimes. Blocking thousands of ads before eventually running out of memory.

Urambo Tauro > Maxima Speed
09/22/2018 at 18:37

That’s the thing I hate about shadowbanning. If used against a mild offense or misunderstanding, it could just as easily be misinterpreted as a glitch. Users who get banned need to be issued notifications informing them that they’ve actually been banned.

Gizmodo and Lifehacker both had articles discussing shadowbanning a few weeks ago, and I almost said something about the way things are handled on Kinja, but I kept my mouth shut because... I didn’t want to be shadowbanned.

Urambo Tauro > facw
09/22/2018 at 18:45

I don’t know how many my Disconnect extension is blocking. The little counter in the corner maxes out at “99+”.

I have the desktop version of Disconnect too, and I’m not sure if that’s redundant with the browser extension, but FWIW it’s reporting that it’s been blocking more trackers from kinja.com than any other website I frequent. 90K trackers blocked on Kinja since I installed it. (Google is the most blocked tracker.)

Maxima Speed > Urambo Tauro
09/22/2018 at 20:21

I just smile and move along, knowing that my post did its job. I wouldn’t say I’m a troll, just someone who likes speaking his opinion very loudly in places that aren’t open to new ideas

Shoop > facw
09/22/2018 at 20:45

Ublock will actually bstsrt mocking the fp after a while

‘100+ ads blocked, what is this an ad agency?'

SpeedSix > Urambo Tauro
09/23/2018 at 00:33

I don’t run any adblocks, but I’ve been perma-logged out on all Kinja main pages (Oppo et al. work fine). I click to sign in to any of my acconuts (all Google linked) and after going through sign-in, it returns me to the main page, still not signed in.

I haven’t given enough of a shit to contact the Kinja team..

Braniff747SP > Urambo Tauro
09/23/2018 at 00:57

I use Ghostery— similar to what you’re using— and just checked: it’s blocking Cxsense, and I have no commenting issues here or elsewhere on Gawker sites.

Urambo Tauro > Braniff747SP
09/23/2018 at 01:08

Huh . Maybe it’s more complicated than just Cxense then .

Urambo Tauro > SpeedSix
09/23/2018 at 01:10

I don’t know what to make of that. Hell, I’m still using the old burner I created when I first joined Kinja. Never even bothered with a linked account.

QuietThunder > Urambo Tauro
09/24/2018 at 09:10

I use uB lock, and it seems every other day Kinja makes a change that causes me to lose functionality. I would happily disable it, but this site is one of the biggest offenders with terrible ads. Videos that auto play, ads that move the screen, popups for their email spam list that block the entire site. It’s just too much. I configured uBlock to allow Cxense and the comments came back immediately. Thanks for the help.

dcp > Urambo Tauro
09/24/2018 at 09:36

I had the same problem, but it was only for part of a day. I want to say Thursday? Everything worked in the morning, but after I came back from lunch, articles on Jalopnik would load with weird artifacts (for one, that new site element for certain post types that appears just below the lede image wouldn’t load all the way, just displayed the “J” Jalopnik logo with shaded blue lines next to/under it). The comments section would also be replaced by those three undulating grey dots that usually indicate “loading.”

Like you said, it was the same on most of the main blogs, but O ppo and a few others (IIRC, the article crossposted on Jalopnik about Explorer trims that look like cop cars on verysmartbrothas.theroot.com) worked just fine (I know that Explorer article was posted much earlier than Thursday , but I tend to binge-browse every week or two instead of visiting every day).

Anyway. I’ve experienced things like this before, and just decided to wait it out. Everything was back to normal the next day. I don’t run any tracker blockers, or at least extensions that are dedicated to doing only that. Just uBlock Origin (which works great on GMG sites, as long as you disable the “cosmetic filtering” component). That said, I did try to disable uBlock to see if that helped, and it didn’t.

Oh, and FWIW, I use Firefox, and didn’t try any other browsers. Just figured it was some more Kinja weirdness.

TAE's Jalopnik Cousin > Urambo Tauro
09/25/2018 at 01:01

I actually made myself a new account.... I have the same issue as SpeedSix.

It’s probably them fighting adblockers agressively. I don’t actually have one, but I’m in Mexico, which means Univision thinks they can’t get any money from me so I don’t get ads, or commenting with my norma TAE account.

LongbowMkII > Urambo Tauro
09/25/2018 at 02:10

Lucky