I am seeing more and more of this

[Anti Federalist]

Reading an article on steel at Chicago Tribune, I see this at the bottom:



Now, before anybody starts freaking out, yeah I know, it's their website, if they don't want comments then so be it.

But I've noticed in the past couple of years, more and more Monolithic State Media sites have eliminated comment sections.

Between that and the recent FedBook et al bans, people's comments must really be chapping the asses of the powers that be.

[phill4paul]

Reading an article on steel at Chicago Tribune, I see this at the bottom:



Now, before anybody starts freaking out, yeah I know, it's their website, if they don't want comments then so be it.

But I've noticed in the past couple of years, more and more Monolithic State Media sites have eliminated comment sections.

Between that and the recent FedBook et al bans, people's comments must really be chapping the asses of the powers that be.

I too have noticed this. Right after I noticed the uptick in conservative posters.

[shakey1]

It seems to be a trend, eh?

[Schifference]

Too many dissenting opinions creates tribal identity against the narrative.

[DamianTV]

One of two possibilities:

1: - Comments are disruptive, not related to the article, and fighting. Also includes Spam and BOT posts.
2: - People are posting the TRUTH, and they do NOT like the TRUTH

"Truth is TREASON in the Empire of Lies"
- Ron Paul

[Ender]

One of two possibilities:

1: - Comments are disruptive, not related to the article, and fighting. Also includes Spam and BOT posts.
2: - People are posting the TRUTH, and they do NOT like the TRUTH

"Truth is TREASON in the Empire of Lies"
- Ron Paul

^^^THIS^^^

[angelatc]

I too have noticed this. Right after I noticed the uptick in conservative posters.

Yes. One of the best things about the internet is that it allowed everybody to have a voice. We could all get the equivalent of a letter to the editor published as often as we chose.

The gate keepers apparently don't like that.

[dannno]

Reading an article on steel at Chicago Tribune, I see this at the bottom:



Now, before anybody starts freaking out, yeah I know, it's their website, if they don't want comments then so be it.

But I've noticed in the past couple of years, more and more Monolithic State Media sites have eliminated comment sections.

Between that and the recent FedBook et al bans, people's comments must really be chapping the asses of the powers that be.

Ya at least two of my local online news sites purged comments in the beginning of this year.

[Brian4Liberty]

Free speech, as long as it in no way conflicts with the warfare/welfare state.

China is the model.

[devil21]

This has been happening across media sites for quite a while but it definitely is ramping up in various ways across the entire net. Comment sections disabled, shadowbans, user contribution and registration rules becoming more restrictive, etc. Either it's run-of-the-mill censorship increasing or there is something happening soon that the collective controlled websites want to limit comments that go opposite of the controlled narrative.

[luctor-et-emergo]

It costs money to have a comment section. Someone has to moderate it, that costs money.
It's a simple cost/benefit type decision, if people keep reading the platform without a comment section, why have one ? It lowers profits.

[monte]

I noticed a few weeks ago ESPN did away with the comment section on their website. A lot of bashing ESPN in the comment section, rightfully so. ESPN radio has become unlistenable, with the exception of a few hosts. I turned it on a week or so ago, and there was a former female college athlete talking about her white privilege. She said white athletes, such as herself, piggyback off of black athletes in the revenue producing sports at university's. I was thinking about how her privilege wasn't so much white, as women athletes aren't all white, it was more her privilege as a woman, and a simple solution would be to pay athletes in revenue producing sports, and do away with all athletic programs that don't make money. Obviously that wasn't what she was arguing for, but it seems like a logical step to address her grievances as a privileged woman.

[dannno]

It costs money to have a comment section. Someone has to moderate it, that costs money.
It's a simple cost/benefit type decision, if people keep reading the platform without a comment section, why have one ? It lowers profits.

That is incorrect, financial reasons has nothing to do with why most comment sections are shutting down.

In fact if anything comment sections give the website more views and it pays for itself.

[H_H]

It seems to be a trend, eh?

Too many of them know! Shut it down! Shut it all down!


Think it’ll work?

[Anti Federalist]

Free speech, as long as it in no way conflicts with the warfare/welfare state.

China is the model.

Yes, it most certainly is.

Has been for almost fifty years now, ever since those twin snakes, Kissinger and Nixon, handed the whole thing to Chairman Mao on a silver platter.

[Brian4Liberty]

It costs money to have a comment section. Someone has to moderate it, that costs money.
It's a simple cost/benefit type decision, if people keep reading the platform without a comment section, why have one ? It lowers profits.

Many people used to read those websites specifically for the comments. They will lose viewership. They want complete editorial control, and they did not have that with the comments section.

[luctor-et-emergo]

That is incorrect, financial reasons has nothing to do with why most comment sections are shutting down.

In fact if anything comment sections give the website more views and it pays for itself.

Many people used to read those websites specifically for the comments. They will lose viewership. They want complete editorial control, and they did not have that with the comments section.

Please read my post again.. I more or less said they will not do it if they lose viewers.

I have to say, a local news site here stopped their comments, they generally turned into giant debates with people who'd spend their entire day commenting, after about a year, it's back but hidden from plain view.

[Anti Federalist]

On the upside: Bryan and mods take note.

As this trend accelerates, it could be the best thing in the world to have happen to online forums and RPFs in particular, which had been in decline for years now as Disqus and FedBook and $#@!ter have come to prominence.

Be prepared to take advantage.

[Philhelm]

One of two possibilities:

1: - Comments are disruptive, not related to the article, and fighting. Also includes Spam and BOT posts.
2: - People are posting the TRUTH, and they do NOT like the TRUTH

I don't buy #1. That was the reasoning behind the IMDb forum shutdown (which really chapped my ass since there isn't really a similar place with similar traffic where movies have their own forums). Other than looking up something about a movie or actor, there wasn't any other reason to hang out at IMDb aside from the forums, so it didn't make sense to nuke them. Regarding disruptive behavior, sites provide features for users to ignore/block other users, which is one of the more annoying aspects of Facebook, Twitter, etc., shutting down rightwing users.

[nobody's_hero]

It's been going on for a while. I do think it has something to do with people being critical of the content. I can't say that I think it has to do with censorship outright, but there are a lot of snowflake "journalists" and op-editors who take offense to someone poking holes in their arguments. Particularly opinion editors, who can't allow anyone else into their safe spaces. Very few opinion pages have comments sections anymore on the MSM sites.

[Anti Globalist]

Yeah I've been seeing this a lot lately too.

[DamianTV]

I don't buy #1. That was the reasoning behind the IMDb forum shutdown (which really chapped my ass since there isn't really a similar place with similar traffic where movies have their own forums). Other than looking up something about a movie or actor, there wasn't any other reason to hang out at IMDb aside from the forums, so it didn't make sense to nuke them. Regarding disruptive behavior, sites provide features for users to ignore/block other users, which is one of the more annoying aspects of Facebook, Twitter, etc., shutting down rightwing users.

I dont buy #1 either. But that is the excuse that many companies use.

Although I *can* sorta see where they are coming from on #1, especially on small sites, such as a free site or a person that doesnt really have much tech experience trying to administer the site themselves. I dont buy the excuse for a split second when its the larger companies.

Yahoo used to have a "Discuss" feature on every news article. That was shut down long ago. Same thing as many other news websites. Now, they have gotten very lazy. "Discuss this article on Fedbook". Or they use other tech giants to enable "discussion".

What has happened is the big companies started to recognize that we were competing with them. It wasnt because we were reporting the news itself, but we posted different interpretations of the information as it was presented. Now, in the age of Total Tech Censorship, they want ONE point of view. They are trying to maintain relevance during a time when we have the power to spread information, not them. The goal, as usual, is a Monopoly. Only the news they report is important, and your point of view is irrelevant.

This is DOUBLY dangerous. One form of Lying that typically comes from the MSM is to "Lie by Exclusion". For example, "the Russian runner came in 2nd place, while the American runner came in second to last place." The lie in that example statement is made by excluding the fact that there were only two runners in the race. Wording is also used to alter perception. Second to Last sounds bad, like that runner got his ass handed to him. But, Second to Last Place in a two man race is FIRST place. Lying by Exclusion and manipulation of wording causes a reader to believe that the person that actually won the race had lost badly. Without comments or the ability to express alternative points of view, or interpretations of the data as presented, most will believe what they are manipulated to believe.

Now, how dangerous is "Lying by Exception" in a world of Censorship? That would be the same as if saying "the race never happened at all". Censorship, such as shutting down comments, only mandates Lying by Exclusion.

[Swordsmyth]

One of two possibilities:

1: - Comments are disruptive, not related to the article, and fighting. Also includes Spam and BOT posts.
2: - People are posting the TRUTH, and they do NOT like the TRUTH

"Truth is TREASON in the Empire of Lies"
- Ron Paul

I'll take #2.

[oyarde]

Reading an article on steel at Chicago Tribune, I see this at the bottom:



Now, before anybody starts freaking out, yeah I know, it's their website, if they don't want comments then so be it.

But I've noticed in the past couple of years, more and more Monolithic State Media sites have eliminated comment sections.

Between that and the recent FedBook et al bans, people's comments must really be chapping the asses of the powers that be.

If you are seeing this often , my guess is they are owned by leftists that oppose free speech .

[Zippyjuan]

https://www.kqed.org/lowdown/29720/n...mment-sections

No Comment! Why More News Sites Are Dumping Their Comment Sections

Letters to the editor have always been a key part of American newspapers, the main channel for readers to respond to the content they consume and publicly debate major political and social issues.

So in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when media outlets began publishing their content on the internet, many editors and reporters were cautiously optimistic that providing a space for online commenting would solicit more diverse audience engagement and create stronger connections between content creators and consumers.

In 2008, NPR introduced its reader commenting system, an option it embedded through a third-party system at the end of most articles on the site. In the announcement, NPR wrote: "We are providing a forum for infinite conversations on NPR.org. Our hopes are high. We hope the conversations will be smart and generous of spirit. We hope the adventure is exciting, fun, helpful and informative."

And an adventure it has been, but not so much a positive one. Eight years and millions of toxic exchanges later, NPR announced the abrupt end of the experiment.

"After much experimentation and discussion, we've concluded that the comment sections on NPR.org stories are not providing a useful experience for the vast majority of our users," wrote Scott Montgomery, former managing editor for digital news, in his 2016 farewell-to-comments address.

Like countless other news outlets, NPR found itself overwhelmed by trolls, anonymous contributors who had too often hijacked comment threads with offensive and inappropriate submissions.

Simply put, trolls are the loudest voices in the room, the ones who write "crazy, nasty things just to get people all riled up," as this latest Above the Noise episode explains in its exploration of trolling psychology.

The big difference between letters to the editor and online commenting, of course, is the moderation and selectivity factor. Costs generally prohibit adequate oversight of who can comment in most online forums, and what they can say. And more outlets are finding that their comments are falling far short of the goal of encouraging debate and civil discourse among a representative selection of users.

NPR found that only a very small and wholly unrepresentative slice of NPR's audience was taking advantage of the comments section, Jensen explained, noting the sharp increase in inappropriate content. In one analysis of site activity, just .06 percent of all the visitors to NPR.org in a single month actually submitted comments at all. And more than half of all comments submitted came from just a tiny group of shockingly prolific contributors who, it estimated, disproportionately tended to be middle-aged men.

The unexpected volume of submissions, Jensen said, also sharply increased how much NPR had to pay external monitors to manage the comments section.

“We all like to have this ideal that we can engage with readers and reporters,” Jensen said. "But in reality, that just wasn’t the way it was working. It didn’t seem there was an easy way to fix that.”

NPR's move away from website comments is far from unique. The trend started in 2013 when Popular Science became one of the first major publications to ditch its public comment section, citing scientific studies that found that blog comments can have a profound effect on readers' perceptions of science.

A series of subsequent analyses found that when readers are exposed to uncivil, negative comments at the end of articles, they are less trustful of the main content (dubbed the “nasty effect”).

Since Popular Science’s exit from the commenting business, a slew of other media outlets -- from Reuters to Recode -- have followed suit.

Vice News is among the most recent large online publications to join the no-comment club.

“Comments sections are really just a continuation of that age-old tradition of letters to the editor, a cherished part of many publications and a valuable way of creating an open dialogue between magazines and the people to whom they are ultimately accountable,” wrote Jonathan Smith of Vice News in announcing his publication's move in late 2016.

"But without moderators or fancy algorithms," he added, comments sections "are prone to anarchy. 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.”

Until recently, the New York Times heavily moderated online comments, devoting a significant amount of in-house staff resources to ensuring conversations remained civil. The site also didn't allow commenting on articles dealing with particularly controversial issues.

In 2017, the Times site shifted gears and implemented a new system called Moderator, a machine-learning technology developed by Google. Commenting is now available on many more news and opinion articles, but open only for one day after publication. The system rates and prioritizes user comments, assigning them values based on an analysis of more than 16 million previously approved comments going back a decade.

More at link.

[Swordsmyth]

https://www.kqed.org/lowdown/29720/n...mment-sections









More at link.

Thank you for supplying us with the party line.

[Danke]

Thank you for supplying us with the party line.

Not surprising. They can't take dissenting posts to the MSM narrative. In the early 1900's they had a study how to control the populous. The conclusion, warfare and information. So six families ended up buying out most independent newspapers.

[Suzanimal]

I've noticed it, too. The HuffPo started making you confirm your identity before commenting. I though the MSM might follow suit with that technique but quite a few eliminated them all together.

[Anti Federalist]

https://www.kqed.org/lowdown/29720/n...mment-sections

More at link.

Sooo...they dumped comment sections because they didn't like what they were hearing.

And that differs from what pretty much everybody in this thread is saying, how, exactly?

Or are you confirming that we're right?

[Anti Federalist]

So in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when media outlets began publishing their content on the internet, many editors and reporters were cautiously optimistic that providing a space for online commenting would solicit more diverse audience engagement and create stronger connections between content creators and consumers.

Just that alone exhibits the hubris and elitism that makes so many people despise the Monolithic State Media.

"Consumers"...not readers.

Shut and consume, prole.