Hi,

Thank you for reaching out! There's definitely nothing stupid in that.

Regarding the link you gave, I can't open the comments as well, both in Firefox and Edge (based on another engine), thus it should most likely be a website's problem. I've sent an email to them informing about the issue.

It's hard to tell anything in general regarding the other problems you mentioned. Could you please give some other cases? Another option is to try the same thing in another browser, such as Safari (on macOS, it should be preinstalled anyway). Comparing the behavior, you can determine whether it's a Firefox problem or just a website bug.

Looking forward to your update!

Hi,

Thank you for the kind reply!

Okay, good that it's not just me. When I tried it in safari I still had issues, but I also hate safari and it never seems to work for me, so assumed I must have done something in the settings. Hopefully the page is having issues and they'll sort it soon. Thank you for contacting them! I couldn't find a way to contact them.

I haven't been keeping track of other sites this has been happening because I've been not really visiting a lot of sites. If it happens again, I'll try to make note of them and post them here. Is that okay? Or does this inquiry need to be closed?

thank you again for your help and response. I appreciate your kindness to this old luddite.

cheers!

Regarding GizModo, they haven't responded yet, so there's no guarantee unfortunately.

Regarding other websites, you are free to post here if you face any of the issues again.

Have a good day!

You might be using strict tracking protection (or be visiting the site in a private window). The OpenWeb (Spot.IM) comment system used in that page is on the tracking protection block list because it can track your visits to different sites using that comment system. Firefox has a feature to globally exempt many embedded sites in Standard mode, but if you ever clicked around in the Tracking Protection settings, it might have been turned off. To investigate/update that:

Option #1: Enable the "convenience" exception list

I don't know what else is on this list besides popular comment systems; maybe I'll have time to look that up later.

(A) If you raised the tracking protection level to Strict or Custom, you can check this on the Settings page.

Under both of those categories, there are two checkboxes (screenshot attached for Strict):

Make sure both boxes are checked to exempt popular comment systems.

(B) If you are using Standard protection, there is a less direct way to check those settings:

(1) In a new tab, type or paste about:config in the address bar and press Enter/Return. Click the button accepting the risk.

More info on about:config: Configuration Editor for Firefox. The moderators would like us to remind you that changes made through this back door aren't fully supported and aren't guaranteed to continue working in the future.

(2) In the search box in the page, type or paste trackingprotection.allow_list and pause while the list is filtered. Firefox should display two or three preferences - the relationship to the checkboxes is as follows:

[x] Allow Firefox to automatically apply exceptions required to avoid major website breakage. => privacy.trackingprotection.allow_list.baseline.enabled

[x] Also apply exceptions automatically that are only required to fix minor issues and make convenience features available. => privacy.trackingprotection.allow_list.convenience.enabled

(3) If either preference is bolded and has a value of false, double-click it (or click the Toggle button or Reset button at the right end of the row) to restore the default value of true (annotated screenshot attached)

The next time you reload the page, the comment section should appear.

Option #2: Create your own exception list

If you don't want to rely on Firefox's built-in convenience list, you can make manual exceptions for popular comment systems. Here's how:

(1) In a new tab, type or paste about:config in the address bar and press Enter/Return. Click the button accepting the risk.

More info on about:config: Configuration Editor for Firefox. The moderators would like us to remind you that changes made through this back door aren't fully supported and aren't guaranteed to continue working in the future.

(2) In the search box in the page, type or paste urlclassifier.trackingSkipURLs and pause while the list is filtered. Usually this won't match any existing preference, and you will only see a bar with the Boolean Number String options and a + button. If the preference already exists, double-click it to display an editing field and skip to #4.

(3) Click String and then click the + button to add a new preference. Firefox should open an editing field.

(4) For the Gizmodo site, you only need this exception:

*://*.spot.im/*

Paste that in then press Enter or click the blue check mark button to save the change. (Screenshot compilation attached.)

If you also want to unblock the popular Disqus comment system, you can add it to the list:

*://*.spot.im/*,*://*.disqus.com/*,*://*.disquscdn.com/*

Note: the way you write the sites for this preference changed in Firefox 139, so if you find older posts with a different style, you can follow them for inspiration but update them to match the new "*://____/*" syntax.