[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?