[ksarw]

I happen to know someone in this case, and am not assuming good faith from the company by any means. I trust and respect the individual.

I'm also generally interested in the comment moderation problem myself, and have been working on it myself for some time. I guess my judgement is clouded by my hope that there is a reasonable excuse for the team(s) at Google to not have solved it by now.

Perhaps it is naive of me to think this way; if it really is as simple as "this does not affect advertising revenue" then that would be quite nearsighted of Google. And, as I mentioned earlier, I am of the opinion that quality comment sections would increase engagement (and revenue as a result), so it doesn't make sense to me.