Channel Note: Germaine II Rises from the Grimpen Mire

 

I set up a 2nd Disqus account to see if I can transition from Germaine to Germaine II. My first account was hacked and I lost all of my upvotes, about 22,000 at the time. On the Disqus platform, loss of upvotes means loss of reputation. In turn, that means loss of ability to comment on other sites unless a moderator adds the damaged user as a trusted user. Since most Mods on most sites won't whitelist me, that makes the entire Disqus platform basically useless outside of my own blog.

From what I can tell, this problem is at least 5 years old and apparently caused by hackers who don't like whoever they attack. I think I was attacked and lost my upvotes about 6 months ago. People including me have complained repeatedly to Disqus, asking for this problem to be fixed, e.g., here and here. Disqus refuses to say when the problem will be fixed, so this crippling defect is probably permanent.