Just a quick note: some of you have written to me to express your concern about some inappropriate advertisements showing up near the comments.

I share your concern.

Disqus has been a good, robust platform for managing our comments. It provides many of our users a single login associated with other sites, gives us pretty decent moderation options, and seriously cuts down on comment spam — something that takes up unbelievable amounts of time in other commenting systems.

But like any company, Disqus wants to make money, especially off of websites with a lot of traffic. They keep finding new ways to turn on new ads on our site. To be honest, these ads, when they’ve snuck in, started paying us without us having to lift a finger. But I’ve always prioritized truth and Catholic values over our need to make ends meet, and I consistently shut off these ads every time they crop back up.

Today, I saw the problematic ads near the comments for the first time. Tantalizing headline with a picture of a scantily clad and shapely young woman? Nope. Not on 1P5, thanks. So I was pretty annoyed when I logged in to Disqus again today to make yet another attempt to shut off the ads and saw this:

Suffice to say, I have a support request in. I’d rather not drop the Disqus platform, especially since it might mean the loss of existing comments, but I’m not going to lose control over what displays here. Stay tuned. If the ads don’t disappear soon, you may see a change in your commenting options.