Friday, May 06, 2022

Technical Difficulties: An Administrative Update

 All - I thought I would take a moment and update on my "technical difficulties"; specifically related to the inability to directly embed comments.

After doing some reading and experimentation, I think the problem is most specifically related to the interface between Brave and Blogger, specifically the "Shields Up" function of Brave that prevents tracking.  When I put "Shields Down", I can embed comments just fine.


After looking at the functionality and some of the blogger, settings, I realized that "Cross Site Cookies Blocking" - which seems to root of the issue - is engaged, which is what everyone online seems to say is the issue.  


So after a week of the pop-up screen, I have found that I really struggle with it as an interface.  I enjoy the actually flow of the conversation as it makes it easier in my mind.  So this is how I am doing it (if anyone is interested).  For background when I write this, I am also on a VPN (NordVPN) and use Ghostery to block trackers.

1) Go to Blogger (or the Blogger Site I am interested in).

2)  Turn Shields "Off".

3)  Do my commenting and hit "enter" for comment to register.

4)  Turn Shields "On" or even close out of Brave and then reopen.

It is a little clunky of a interface, but seems to be working okay.

I would be interested in feedback if the change back to embedded comments is working for everyone - or note - and any other potential "fixes".  

As always, thanks for the time spent here and your patience as I work through this.

10 comments:

  1. My embedded comments have been working perfectly since I turned on third party cookies. But I know a couple people that still have issues but they are using laptops and other browsers like you are so I’m sure there is another issue at play. Most who were having issues were commenting via an iPad using Safari or Chrome.

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  2. Ed, I only use Safari on my phone and do not use it for anything beyond The Book of Face, so I cannot comment on that. It is interesting to me that this seems to be a sort of rolling change, from when Leigh at Five Acres and Dream commented on it last year to a flurry of issues (including mine) last week. I would think that if browsers want to encourage people to use them, they would be hard at work trying to resolve the issue.

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    1. Apple seems to have a penchant for changing settings sometimes with major software updates so I expect, the third party cookie setting was reset (into the off position) with a software update in the name of security. Or it may have just been a seemingly innocuous question that I answered incorrectly thinking I was protecting myself but didn't fully understand the ramifications. I don't remember if either those coincided with the time the problem started or not.

      Overall though, this is the first real issue I've had with Blogger in two decades of using it. Once a long time ago there was an issue where photos no longer loaded for a few days but other than that, it has been relatively trouble free so I'm inclined to give Blogger/Google, the benefit of the doubt for now. But I do sense that its days are probably numbered and these things might occur more frequently in the future.

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    2. Ed, this is the same for me in terms of complaints with Blogger. The change in the overall behind the scenes look was inconvenient but I adapted. I do think that it is becoming more and more of a legacy program now and at some point will end up with a sunset date - or Google will require migration to some fully Google platform.

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  3. Anonymous10:49 AM

    I'm at the point I don't know where the problem lies. There are some Blogger blogs where I've had no trouble commenting normally at all, a few (like yours and Ed's) where I can still comment anonymously, and only one on which I cannot comment at all. I can live with that.

    I think I have all my settings as they should be, but who knows. You'd think that a major platform like Blogger would try to be compatible with all the major browsers. By the same token, you'd think Apple (Safari) would do the same.

    -Kelly

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    1. Kelly, it is all just sorcery to me honestly. I have no idea why a few blogs seem to be singled out. Who knows, maybe we have made some kind of list.

      Thanks for persevering!

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  4. Anonymous6:16 PM

    I use Chromium for blogger. The issue for me is that when someone has embedded comments enabled, I can't sign into blogger to comment. My only choices are anonymous or Name/URL

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    1. Anonymous, that is an issue I had with Brave as well. The only thing that seems to have resolved it for me is the solution above, which I suspect is in no ways ideal.

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  5. Good luck with it, TB. You all be safe and have a blessed weekend!

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    1. Thank you Linda. Hopefully it will sort itself out.

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