John Chuckman
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN INVESTMENTWATCH
“Compiling a list of media companies that have shut down their comment sections.”
http://www.investmentwatchblog.com/compiling-a-list-of-media-companies-that-have-shut-down-their-comment-sections/
Interesting effort on a quite noticeable phenomenon.
But comment sections cost money to run, especially for operations with large numbers of readers.
As I'm sure you know, the mainline press has been experiencing economic decline for a long time as the entire model for news and advertising is undergoing dramatic change from the effects of the Internet.
So, it's not just driven by the wish to suppress dissent, but that, I'm sure, plays a role, something easily enough discovered as in the example I offer just below.
Also, this list would be enlarged greatly if you included all the publications which, while still having comments, actually work actively to limit or discourage them in many ways.
The Guardian newspaper is one of the best examples I know.
It severely limits the number of stories upon which readers may comment, and there is a discernible pattern in the subjects of stories subjected to the limits.
Its editors remove comments regularly. Selected commenters, after having had some comments removed, are put under a watch regime of moderation before publication.
And the editors periodically remove all privileges from commenters they have taken a dislike to, always claiming, of course, high-blown stuff about house rules.
It is quite a sinister operation behind a facade of open comments for readers, providing almost a case study in hidden control of supposedly free speech.
Real Western values? I think not. Yet a newspaper like The Guardian wants that Western-values reputation as part of the framework in which it presents its stories. A form of camouflage, for sure.
Other publications severely limit the number of words you may use, so much so that it becomes hard to say anything meaningful. Commenting reduced to a form of “likes” and “dislikes” is no commenting at all.
Actually, there are relatively few generous comments sections left in the West’s on-line press. The Golden Age of Internet Freedom, as it were, so refreshing and exciting as it came into being, has already largely passed.
Of course, pay walls also serve the purpose of limiting comment, and pay walls have become pretty ordinary.
Still one more limit and control mechanism that has become fairly widespread is allowing access to comments only through an unpleasant operation like Facebook.
Also note, the way Disqus now does the comment sections for many of those remaining.
Disqus does a good job, for right now, but what if they turn Google-Facebook-Amazon?
Power in the hands of a few is not healthy.
