[colordrops]

Many sites have been closing their comments section. It seems to me that the purpose is to further constrict dissent and control the message. Rather than finding a technical solution or one that involves moderation, these sites just shut the community out and become a broadcast medium once again.

A notable removal of a comments section was NPR's shutdown right around the time of the Democratic National Convention. The comments were overwhelmingly anti-Hillary, but they were for the most part civil. It looked really bad because these were progressives and liberals going after her rather than rabid right-wingers. Since NPR clearly had a pro-Hillary agenda, the comments section had to go.

[kevinburke]

> It seems to me that the purpose is to further constrict dissent and control the message.

Insofar as "control the message" means "we are tired of anonymous people in our comments section doxxing our authors and other people, and vile, racist attacks on our authors and groups of people", then yes, this is an attempt to "control the message."

> Since NPR clearly had a pro-Hillary agenda, the comments section had to go.

There's no evidence for this, and it's unrelated to the topic.

[colordrops]

> anonymous people in our comments section doxxing our authors and other people, and vile, racist attacks on our authors and groups of people", then yes, this is an attempt to "control the message."

That is a cop-out and not true for all comment sections.

> There's no evidence for this, and it's unrelated to the topic.

That's a huge cop-out statement to shutdown conversation, and this is about as on-topic as possible. Who are you to decide what is on-topic?

[kevinburke]

Sorry - did you read the article? It was true for Vice:

> Too often they devolve into racist, misogynistic maelstroms where the loudest, most offensive, and stupidest opinions get pushed to the top and the more reasoned responses drowned out in the noise... we had to ban countless commenters over the years for threatening our writers and subjects, doxxing private citizens, and engaging in hate speech against pretty much every group imaginable.

> We don't have the time or desire to continue monitoring that crap moving forward.

[kristofferR]

They deliberately neglected to mention how often the top comment pointed out factual inaccuracies in their stories though.

[reality_czech]

1. use the anonymous comment system to post fake threats against yourself and/or racist rants

2. use the comments from #1 to argue that anonymous comment sections should be shut down

3. profit!

[kevinburke]

Internet writers are busy enough without having to maintain fake racist diatribes against themselves in their own comment sections. I don't see what "profit" any writer gets from shutting down the comments section; they clearly wanted to keep it open, despite the numerous accounts they had to ban. This is ludicrous.

[reality_czech]

From the perspective of someone who wants to create a narrative, and doesn't care overmuch about the truth, allowing comments on articles is just a nuissance. If they express a point of view contrary to the narrative, you have to waste time moderating them down so they can't be seen, or (in extreme cases) actually replying to them. So you just post a fake comment or two, scream "think of the children!!!" and shut it down. Or you just wait for that one mentally ill guy to post something crazy and just point to that. Same result.

It's the same tactic news sources use in other contexts, too. You want to create a narrative against candidate or political party X. So find a really loathsome person who supports X and run a story about them. Perfect. Never mind that most people affiliated with X woud never associate with that person.

[Chris2048]

You could fund a kickstarter, say...

[gdulli]

> There's no evidence for this, and it's unrelated to the topic.

What it lacks in veracity it makes up for in truthiness.

[234dd57d2c8db]

If you want to put your head in the sand, more power to you. Might benefit you though to look at the whole picture and really try to observe what's happening though.

[colordrops]

I regularly participate in comment sections across many sites - how is that putting my head in the sand?

[throwaway420]

I hate this trend of getting rid of comments for many reasons, but honestly it's usually because the comments section in many publications has some of the most insightful ideas. Yes, you'll occasionally have to see some idiot spouting off or see some spam, but I think the cost is worth it.

Look at Techdirt for example: great articles, and actually insightful and funny comments that add to the discussion. Every article of theirs that I check out gets at least 1 extra page view from me simply because I love checking out the comments. Shoutout to them for nurturing an actual community.

I agree with you that this trend of getting rid of comment sections has more to do with controlling the message. The corporate media doesn't have to (and can't) fool the majority of population with pro-establishment news anymore. But what they're trying to do is convince enough people that they're mostly alone and isolated in opposition to official policies. When there is no comments section with lots of dissenting voices, it's easy to feel like you're alone in being against war propaganda or whatever the latest cause the establishment is promoting.

[fil_a_del_fee_a]

Same goes for HN. I typically read the headline, skim the article, and go straight for the comments!

[mratzloff]

In my opinion, and I would venture the opinion of most of these organizations shutting down their comment sections, the comments being posted add nothing to the discussion and have to be monitored for abuse. That's apparent on the majority of Facebook, in my experience: children arguing and calling names. There is no positive.

You want to dissent? An Internet comment is about the least effective way to do it.

[darkengine]

I've listened to and read NPR for many years, and I've perceived (perhaps falsely as perception is not infallible) an increase in the amount of stories that I found to be questionable in terms of neutrality. In my observation, the comments section in many of these stories, on NPR and on other sites, had been pretty good about calling out slanted stories and offered an alternative viewpoint. Granted, the signal-to-noise ratio on purely factual stories was pretty poor, but I think the value of a comments section really came out when an article that was more about narrative than about reporting slipped through.

Again, in my observation, it seems like more news outlets are cutting their comments sections as the incidence of the comments calling out poor reporting increases.

[brennen]

> Rather than finding a technical solution or one that involves moderation

There are no technical solutions.

(There is, at best, tooling which helps to some extent but which can easily backfire.)

Moderation is necessary and difficult. Skilled human hours must be spent. Humans with the temperament and skills are rare and likely to suffer burnout. Organizations rarely value community management skills in proportion to their necessity and the difficulty of acquiring them.

Even where community management is valued, moderators are often forced to walk a narrow line between exercising power to shut down bad actors and having their authority undermined by their own organizations when bad actors complain, especially if those bad actors can be conceived of as customers.

To put it another way: Before you latch onto the view that removing comment sections is about suppressing dissent, consider life from the perspective of someone whose job it is to moderate comments.

[MaxfordAndSons]

> It seems to me that the purpose is to further constrict dissent and control the message.

I think you're ignoring the historical aspect here. Most news sites (especially ones for originally print/broadcast media) just threw together a commenting function at some point in the past 20 years because it was an easy thing to do to increase engagement. This was both before lots of people discovered internet trolling as a significant past-time, and before US politics were as polarized as they are today. These organizations never intended to be host to a "community" (though they may use that language in marketing).

Also what exactly does it mean to "dissent" against a news publication? What are you consenting to them doing in lieu of that? You can act against them with your clicks and dollars. And isn't "controlling the message" literally the existential purpose of any publication?

[zigzigzag]

What does it mean to dissent? Go look at the Guardian. They have been progressively eliminating comments sections on their stories. If you go look at the comments sections that are left it's pretty obvious why: the articles are often crap and the comments point it out. Obviously the "journos" take offense at that and start telling each other how horrible the comments are and how full of trolling it is.

In reality the comments are often pretty on point. The Guardian seems to have dropped off a cliff quality-wise since Rusbridger stopped being the editor = many stories are either hopelessly biased, hysterical, or demonstrate profound hypocrisy. Often they are simply opinion pieces where the opinions are extremist. Closing down comments is a form of sticking their heads into the sand.