News Sites Are Bringing Comments Sections Back as a Paid Feature ⇥ open.substack.com

Ben Whitelaw, writing for the New Public:

Publishers saw comment sections as a reputational hazard and a cost centre and, by the middle of the decade, a dozen sites — including Popular Science, Chicago Sun-Times, Motherboard, Reuters, and NPR — had significantly reduced or completely disabled commenting features. Each argued, often without the data to back it up, that its readers preferred to discuss stories via social media. And so, what was once heralded as a new frontier of reader dialogue died a not-so-quiet death.

A decade on, something surprising is happening: reader comments are having a mini renaissance. After years of chasing social media engagement and being burned in the process, publishers have realised that commenting has a tangible value — to the broader public, yes, but also in terms of advertising and subscription revenue.

Via Karl Bode, Techdirt:

The rush to vilify and eliminate the comment section ignored, as Ben notes, that a subscription to news outlets doesn’t just have to provide access to journalism, it can feature participation in journalism. As an online writer for decades, I’ve seen every insult known to man; at the same time I’ve routinely seen comment insight that either taught me something new or helped me correct errors in my reporting that both I and my editors missed.

The obliteration of the comment section threw that baby out with the bath water. Facebook comments are, if you haven’t noticed, a homogenized shit hole full of bots, rage, and bile that undermines connection and any effort at real conversation. These sorts of badly run systems are also more easily gamed by bad actors (like, say, authoritarians using culture war agitprop to confuse the electorate and take power).

I think I remain personally uninterested in having a comments section, but Whitelaw’s article has certainly made me consider how strongly I have that stance. It is tough because, while I expect readers would be respectful of one another — I often appreciate the comments under one of Michael Tsai’s posts — I am still wary of taking on the role of a moderator.

One thing both of these articles reinforced, however, is my pet theory that anonymity was never the problem. Whitelaw, who formerly led moderation of the Times of London’s comment section, writes of a commenter who wrote under their real name and was so “infamously combative” that they were eventually banned. Bode’s reference to the Facebook comments plugin — which goes away next week — is also a reminder that even people using their real identity were hostile commenters. The problem has always been with overly permissive moderation policies.