A Small Victory

Google comment box to nowhere
February 2020

I've been frustrated the last two weeks because I could not comment directly on several blogs that I regularly read. I finally started commenting via email IF I had that person's private email address. Commenting on the posts I read is something I enjoy because the comments connect me directly to the blog author. I've developed some wonderful friendships with other blogger simply by commenting.

Recently, the photo above is what I encountered on nearly half of the blogs that I read faithfully every morning. The "Google Account" tab shows that I was not signed in, but in reality, I was. Any comment written in the comment box would not publish even though it disappeared when I hit "Publish."

I contacted Blogger about the problem. Honestly, they were not very helpful but suggested that I switch my internet browser to Chrome, which incidentally is a Google product, as is Blogger. Can you say "conflict of interest"?

Through trial and error, I discovered I could comment IF the blog did not have embedded comments (comments on the same page as the original blog post.) About half of the blogs I routinely read did not have embedded comments. Dee helped me confirm that the embedded comments were the problem.

Then finally, Blogger came through with a possible solution - make sure the "Cross-site Tracking" was turned off in my browser settings. I really didn't want to do that, but commenting on blogs is something that I enjoy and want to continue doing.

Browser settings on iPad

If you or someone you know has been having problems not being able to comment on blogs, I can attest that changing the setting (circled in red in the above image) did solve the problem. This "Fix" is definitely much easier than sending email comments to individual bloggers or changing web browsers. Right now, I'm happy to chalk up a small victory in the technology column.