[scythe]

I wish it didn't fall on me to point this out, but bigotry is a political position, and trolling is a personality flaw.

Honestly, I've never read VICE comments. But if it follows the pattern I've been seeing elsewhere on the Internet, when VICE's comment section was a liberal trollfest, it was okay, but when the conservatives started winning, it had to be shut down. Then of course the editors blame trolling, which was always pervasive.

The problem is that we, the elite; we, the establishment; we, the intelligentsia, have got to maintain credibility with people who dislike us. What we haven't got available to us that the Silvio Berlusconi's of the world can use is clientelism, the ability to make people like you by offering them things you can't actually give them. I can't tell you how many times I've criticized liberals who respond "But conservatives [...]!".

We're supposed to be better than them. That's the whole point.

[kevinburke]

> when the conservatives started winning, it had to be shut down.

There's zero evidence for this. Please read the article.

[scythe]

I read the whole article.

I don't believe you for a second, though.

[kevinburke]

The main complaint listed by Vice in the article was that the comments section inevitably led to low quality debate, and commenters frequently had to be banned for posting racist, sexist comments, and/or releasing private information about Vice's writers or other people in the comment section. Those seem like perfectly valid reasons to shut it down, and seem orthogonal to "conservatives started winning," however you want to define that.