When Above the Law decided to eliminate its comments, I suggested it prefaced a shift in direction from its last ten years of lurid T&A content to its new focus on insipid social justice-y clickbait. I think some of the folks there are angry with me, even unfollowed me on the twitters, for revealing their secret plan.
But then, the New York Times Room for Debate raised the issue as well.
Many newspapers and online media companies have begun disabling comment sections because of widespread abuse and obscenity. Of course, that vitriol is not meted out equally: The Guardian analyzed its comments and found the 10 most abused writers of the past decade were female and/or black. (The Times moderates comments in an effort to keep them on-topic and not abusive.)
Have comment sections — once thought to be a democratizing force in the media — failed?
Some wag might point out the hoary problem that correlation does not prove causation, but who doesn’t hate logic? Rather than look to the poor, abused writers’ gender or skin color, one might also look to the absurdity or irrationality of their content. But that would require thinking, and thinking gives people headaches. Nobody likes headaches.
At the Times, there are the expected and obvious essays, two promoting discourse despite how awful it can get, and two calling for the eradication of hate speech, because comments, and particularly anonymity, promotes, well:
With the exception of just a few webpages and blogs — like Very Smart Brothas and Ta-Nehisi Coates’s space on the website of the Atlantic magazine — comment sections seem to be little more than a microphone for the Internet’s most despicable, cowardly and hateful personalities. It is in comment sections that trolls get a static space with a built-in audience, at which they can hurl the kind of shocking vitriol and bigotry most wouldn’t dare express offline.
This from a former blogger who has gone on to become a Senior Editor at Ebony. What is it that brings this “shocking vitriol” down upon her?
As most of my writing deals with subjects of race, gender and sexuality, there is a large built-in base ready to attack. I thank them for giving our site (which they claim to hate) daily web clicks, but I will not reward them with engagement. Once a fantastic space for a meeting of minds scattered across the globe, comment sections have become rest havens for racists, sexists and homophobes.
Missing from her ire is the recognition that her writing deals with controversial subjects, issues about which many people strongly disagree. She’s certainly entitled to hold whatever beliefs she wants, and to express them in any way she thinks worthwhile. But does that make everyone who disagrees with her “racists, sexists and homophobes”? In her mind, apparently so.
I have been critical of comments. I ride herd here with an iron fist, trashing more comments than I post, because this is my blog, and I can do whatever I please. Some of you promote violence, which I do not, and I won’t let you use my soapbox for that purpose. Some of you are well-intended but, well, clueless. Yes, that’s my view, but again, it’s my home, so I win, you lose, get over it.
There is a laundry list of reasons why I trash comments. But the bottom line is twofold: I don’t need to tolerate assholes and you don’t have the right to use my soapbox to make people stupider. I may be completely wrong in my assessment, but then, nobody is stopping you from opening up your own blog, writing your deepest thoughts and spreading your brilliance. Just not here.
Despite the constant angst involved in my love/hate relationship with comments, I’ve never shut them down, or refused to allow non-lawyers to comment (although I think that may be a great idea about three times a day). Why? Some of you are very funny, and we can all stand more humor in our lives. But more importantly, sometimes, a comment is just totally brilliant, far more so than what I’ve written to engender it.
So if comments are too scary and awful for the Senior Editor at Ebony to tolerate, or make Staci and Lat and little Joey Patrice cry, moderate them. Maybe you’ll trash one that doesn’t deserve to be trashed. Maybe you’ll misunderstand what a commenter is saying (happens to me all the time, not that some of you can express a thought with an iota of clarity). But that smile, laugh, nugget of brilliance, happens.
You have no First Amendment right to comment. It’s not a free speech issue, even though many of you believe it is. Remember, there is neither an intelligence nor sanity test when purchasing a keyboard. So what is it then?
They’re lying to you. Denigrating comments as a cesspool of hate, and using that as an excuse to eliminate them, is a lie designed to conceal two things: they’re too lazy to moderate comments and too fragile to tolerate disagreement. Comments are just words. They don’t break bones, make you bleed or kill you. At worst, they give you a headache. Take some Excedrin.
And before some snarky dumbass raises the obvious, no, that doesn’t mean that anyone, myself included, has to respond to comments “respectfully,” or accept that any disagreeable comment isn’t stupid and wrong. You write comments. I tell you you’re a moron. But your comment is posted, and if anyone thinks you’re right and I’m wrong, at least the difference is aired. That’s the best you’re going to get, and the best to which you’re entitled. A chance to have a view that disagrees with mine see the light of day.
Sometimes you change a mind or two, even mine. Most times not, but what did you expect? At least there is thought out there, even if expressed in nasty and vulgar language. Well, at least here there is, most of the time.
The marketplace of ideas is becoming littered with empty storefronts where comments are silenced. That should tell you something about the people who can’t bear discourse and the exchange of ideas.
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I would comment, but, uh, you’d just trash it.
You trolls are so presumptuous.
“The marketplace of ideas is becoming littered with empty storefronts where comments are silenced.”
Pithy this is. Liked it, I did.
Yoda? Is that you?
Something of an inside joke, I guess. Go back and read the comments over the couple of weeks if you want to get it. I don’t think it’s worth the effort, but if you’re having a slow Sunday…
Actually, it was,”liked it I did.”
I wonder if you recognize the irony in the worthlessness of your comments? Not an iota of thought or humor. An utterly worthless waste of space.
Why, thank you. Thank you very much.
You’re generally not offensive, but you’re not funny either. You’re just there.
Can this stop so we can actually get to comments that add some tiny degree of thought to the post? Please?
” it’s my home, so I win, you lose, get over it.”
Can you please buy the Houston (L)Astros?
As to comments, NOT monitoring them leads to intelligent people ceasing to read them. It took 2 minutes of reading the comments of any story in Sheldon Adelson’s secretly- purchased Las Vegas Review Journal for me to stop. I won’t bother speculating on the connection of every story with criticism of Obama,but 60% of the population doesn’t gamble every day, so they need something to do.
Yeah, I’m saying I’m intelligent. But only in Nevada.
Not that your bar is low or anything.
The problem is that there’s a false distinction being made between “democratization”, the meeting of minds on one hand, and “hate speech”, bigotry, and vitriol on the other. The two are not mutually exclusive. If you assiduously go forth to meet your fellow members of the body politic and learn their minds you will quickly run headlong into the inescapable fact that many of them are assholes. Even worse, every one of these assholes has the same political rights that you do.
That’s what democracy is, a tacit agreement to share power with assholes. It sounds awful, but in return the assholes have to share power with us, and that’s the best way we’ve found to date to avoid being ruled completely by assholes.
Us?
When I comment to your posts rather infrequently, I try to add to the debate. Apparently you have determined that you “win’ most of them.
We all should have different points of view. I always thought that the exchange of ideas on these brilliant posts you write is subjective in nature, therefore someone claiming they ‘win’ most of them must have a degree of arrogance (only logical Scott…no harm intended). Now mind you, that is my subjective opinion and does not mean I am correct. I simply could be just one of those assholes on the other side and your perceived arrogance just might be god-like brilliance!
I think if you are keeping a scorecard, you need to subdivide it into objective facts regarding law and subjective ideas regarding law. That is why we have presumably 8 (should be 9) fairly intelligent Supreme Court Justices who have varying opinions stemming from the ‘interpretation’ of the constitution. Some see it as a literal document and others see it as an evolving document that must adapt to changing times.
Warning…this is a subjective debate note: Oh those idiots from the far right that claim the founding fathers could have dreamed of even an automatic flushing urinal…just adding to the debate, now take a swing at me. So who is right?
Scott…please factor in a complete scorecard next time for every debate at the bottom of the post. Make it fun and put a timeline on entry, divide it into two camps – subjective and objective, and we all have an opportunity here to embarrass the loser at the conclusion of the debate using theoretical scorecards (we need only thick skinned people participating so I would advise you adding it in your terms and conditions). Being a layman, I probably won’t win one objective post regarding the law with your impressive legal mind. However, with arrogant people like you and a complete asshole like me, I would like to see that tally…Ah…but from who?
I humbly admit it cannot be done….can you? It seems so!
You start out with a flawed premise. I never said “win,” and no one who understood either law or what this blog does would use such a word. Everything else you’ve written is based on your flawed premise.
I write a post. That’s my position. People disagree in comments. The question is whether they’ve argued their disagreement sufficiently to make me change my my position. Usually, they do not. It’s not win or lose in an objective sense, as that’s for judges to decide. But here, I’m the judge, because it’s my blog. Anywhere else, it’ a different story.
There is, however, one metric worth noting. Anyone who comments here has come here of their own choice, meaning that they found something sufficiently worth their time to read and comment about. If it’s worth people’s time to disagree, that speaks to its force and value. Since I have no say over whether anyone finds SJ worth their time to read or comment, the mere fact that they’ve come here and commented answers your spectacularly ill-conceived grasp of this post.
“I have been critical of comments. I ride herd here with an iron fist, trashing more comments than I post, because this is my blog, and I can do whatever I please. Some of you promote violence, which I do not, and I won’t let you use my soapbox for that purpose. Some of you are well-intended but, well, clueless. Yes, that’s my view, but again, it’s my home, so I win, you lose, get over it.”
A flawed premise? I recognize that you and other people who blog have the ‘right’ to monitor the comments. Some delete and some trash. You seem to be on the latter side. Congratulations (sarcasm unintended)!
That is ok. But to say that you are not an arbiter of opinions is nonsense. You clearly said that many people who post are ‘clueless.’ Hey…that is your right but is clearly subjective in nature. In essence, if you control the board you can determine who are winners and losers of an argument. Pure and free speech lets all voices in, even the ones that you think are clueless.
So censorship of your own blog is fine. I have no problem with that. Like Maurice said, you do not need to create a platform for bigotry and hate for others to abuse. However, if you take Maurice’s point of views out of this analysis, then what is left is for a blogger to have the cudgel over the commenters head and create an asymmetric exchange of ideas.
By natural conclusion, I stand behind my original comment that you make judgements, which seems to me, to create a winner and loser over your posts. You are not a referee, your closer to a dictator…in a good way Scott! Having said that, I will probably lose this argument but that is indeed the reason why I do enjoy taking the time I have to read your quite insightful posts, regardless if I disagree with you or not.
That’s about the decision of which comments get aired and which get trashed. You’re really not getting this at all. It’s not about winning or losing.
What non-lawyers fail to get is that some of their ideas on the law are so utterly off the wall wrong as to be dangerous. There is a realm of reasonable argument, and a realm of absolutely wrong. Here’s the thing: the lawyers, regardless of whether they agree with me or not, agree with my trashing the comments that are dangerously stupid. Non-lawyers may not see it that way, but then, that’s because they’re not lawyer and can’t possibly realize how little they grasp. See Dunning-Kruger.
Ok. I concede your point…again. I think what you were meaning to say is that It is a matter of degrees which you argue on the comments, not the factual legal underpinnings.
Final thought. Is it possible to have incredibly smart layman who may know certain laws more than some incredibly stupid lawyers (some whom should never have passed the Bar)? Have you come across that? I have!
No reason to concede. In fact, you won! Your comments have all been posted today. Anyone reading can agree with you or me; You don’t need me to agree with you, and you certainly don’t have to agree with me. That’s the different layers here.
Here’s a different paradigm to think of it. There is a floor, above which are non-frivolous legal arguments, some good, some bad, some awful, but at least they’re not totally batshit crazy. Below the floor are the crazy ones, or ones that are simply so totally, clearly, inarguably wrong, that they fall below the minimum threshold to be posted.
And yes, there are quite a few non-lawyers who make some incredibly sound (occasionally brilliant) arguments. And there are some lawyers who make some incredibly stupid ones as well, particularly here with lawyers who don’t practice crim law and are sometimes no more knowledgeable about it then non-lawyers (and not the smart non-lawyers, either). So yeah, it happens.
Your First Amendment analysis is always brilliant and critically important. But you are missing one important point. Right wing racist and homophobic comments are a dominant component of social media. It is organized via talk radio and other right wing organizations. It is a purposeful, orchestrated attempt to influence political and social culture. It is totally legal, constitutional and government censorship would be wrong. But as you acknowledge with respect to your blog, you are not obligated to give a platform for those who you think are idiots or with whom you disagree. Forbidding comments to avoid providing a platform for right wing hate speech is perfectly appropriate. Monitoring is not a realistic option for most of us–.we have day jobs. The same is true, by the way, for private institutions such as Universities. Kids should hear all views even if it hurts their fragile sensibilities but universities also have the right to enforce their value systems and forbid hateful speech which uses the private university platform. Racists and bigots have the right to speak but I have the right to block them from using my platform. Let them build their own blogs and universities.
I don’t find that at all. Perhaps your experience is different. Or perhaps your a bit paranoid. I have a hard time believing that your blog, which I don’t believe I’ve ever seen, is the target of right wing talk radio, but if you say so, I’ll have to take your word for it. As for mine, I’ve never found that to be the case. Not at all.
This is Dan Shonana Janae Angela Davis Harriet Tubman Hull.
As you know, I now self-identify as a black lesbian professor and civil rights activist.
Where have you been? Everyone knows that all racist and homophobic comments all come from only the deepest recesses of hatred. And usually either the Koch Brothers or 3 or 4 right-wing talk radio shows. They never come from shtick, satire, literature, wit, humor, political comment, irony or parody. Ever. Get with it, sir.
Thank you.
–DSJADHTH
Are you sure you aren’t a figment of Rush Limbaugh’s imagination?
Well, that, too. Just don’t Mansplain anything to me. I’m a Woman now. I’m Sensitive.
You were always a woman to me.
If what you say is true, the correct response is purposeful, orchestrated left-wing speech, not censorship. The best antidote to a bad idea is a good idea, not silence.
Yes but the First Amendment gives private publishers the right to refuse to allow their platforms to be used for speech which is objectionable. While the best response is rational discourse, sometimes it is also effective to refuse to allow publication of objectionable speech on a platform that may be perceived by some as legitimizing such objectionable speech.
But the “objectionable” speech will just show up somewhere else. If you don’t want people to hold “bad” views, convince them not to! Innoculate the populace against foolishnesd with wisdom.
If this comment didn’t fall below the “minimum legal literacy” requirement, the things you delete must be truly terrifying.
I’m waiting to see where this ends up. It’s pretty batshit crazy to me.
I want my red jumper and matching pumps back.
Maybe I’m wrong, but I get the sense that a lot of the “social justice” concerns on whether to keep comments are excuses for whether or not to pay someone to police the comments.
I think ATL was closest to being upfront about this; the statement read to me, “comments aren’t adding value to the site, and it would cost us money to get them back to somewhere that adds value, and we don’t think it’s worth it to spend that money.”
Only if you believe the ATL statement to be true, rather than a rationalization. I call bullshit.
Don’t worry, forces of favonian uberty cloaked in bahuvrihi form acting as a sort of ablator will relume the intertubes once everyone figures out that it might take a little more effort than expected.
In the meantime don’t forget to pray for the Fubar angels to inherit the core of the comment circululum across the planet in case everything doesn’t work out according to plan.
I miss Fubar too.
There is definitely a degree of observer bias involved here, as with the commentor who claims “Right wing racist and homophobic comments are a dominant component of social media.” It’s something I keep running into, especially with such things as characterizations of the New York Times and Washington Post as representatives of the liberal media. I see such claims and splutter, “but! but!” thinking back on both papers’ apologia for our invasion(s) of Iraq, their (historical) provisions of cover for U.S. intelligence, their non-coverage of later chapters in the BCCI and Nugen-Hand scandals, and the like. Meanwhile, I’m totally ignoring absurd SJW-stroking op-eds or latter-day successors to ‘Jimmy’s World.’ Why? Because i don’t bother reading them, as the headline tells me all I need to know. My memory of these papers, then, consists of a bunch of vague recollections of content skimmed and discarded as ‘silly,’ along with a number of articles I read — and disagreed with — more thoroughly. What’s the true nature of these journalistic stalwarts? Hell if I know….
Some people see the world in terms of politics. I try not to. I don’t find it useful except to make excuses and always have someone to blame.
SHG,
I am very glad you allow comments. I have learned a lot from the comments on SJ, and your sometimes brutal but insightful replies. Promoting the frank exchange of ideas, even when cluttered by idiocy, is a worthy but exhausting effort.
My sincere compliments to you for this post and the opinion it expresses. I hope that the multitude of the terminally stupid does not deter you. There is gold in your comments even though you have to pan through tons of gravel to find it.
All the best.
RGK
Gold for me as well. The cringeworthy ones are hard, but the brilliant ones make the suffering worthwhile.
Wasn’t there a funny cartoon about this? You know, the one where a computer user tells their friend, “On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a prog”?
“Some of you are well-intended but, well, clueless.”
Don’t microagression me bro.
You’re kinda funny. But this is your last comment if you don’t use a real email. Just sayin’. Same rules for you as everyone else.
I have a mixture of feelings about web news organizations disabling comments. The most prominent one is disappointment, because with a little careful coding they could have their commentators moderating themselves.
My personal yardstick of excellent community moderation is Slashdot, which allows moderators to qualify the nature of their up-or-down vote with a descriptive word (allowing user filtering). Bandwagon voting sprees are mitigated by a maximum score of +5 and a minimum score of -1, with anonymous comments being made at +0. I often find myself wondering why more internet communities don’t use slashdot-style moderation, and I’ve yet to come up with an adequate answer.
SJ of course has a small enough commentariat that such automated comment moderation is mostly unnecessary, though without having a peek at the post moderation queue I can only imagine the load of trash SHG will have to sort through on any given post.
Your light is still on but many of the other have gone dark and I think it is because you are willing to do the work of enforcing your rules. I think the stay on topic rule is one of the more important ones.
A blog with no comments is like a soapbox with no hecklers.
I agree about staying on topic, and I think almost everyone appreciates it.
More honored in the breach than the observance…
I suppose this would not be the best time to post a link to a new internet based meta for lawyer marketing that incentivizes lawyers turning prospects into customers.
I think, which is not my strongpoint, that you are a bloated gasbag asshole.. that actually may be a redundancy..
Have a nice day.. always counter a negative with a positive then the comment slides by..
I might think something about you, but I don’t.
Further to the objective/subjective distinction, but having nothing whatsoever to do with comment vel non on SJ.
After having spent too much time following comments in all sorts of places, I seen common trends that have been disturbing, for one reason or another. But I’m beginning to think that for too long conversation has been focused on the fate of particular comments once they’re submitted. At the risk if being call out of bounds, at least when it comes to the Newspaper of Record, and its peers, the big question may be what articles are open for comment in the first place.
As I see it, when the factual premise of the article is neither in dispute nor subject to radical interpretation, commentators are allowed to have at it. But when the matter asserted, involving a “sensitive topic” in the archaic use of the term, e.g., vested interests, national security, leaves the other shoe hanging for anyone reasonably familiar with the subject matter, don’t look for the comment feature to activated. Particularly when the article reads somewhere in between a massaged press release and all the news that fits; as opposed to the paper’s own investigative reporting where the editors have already gone over the story every which was from the middle, so have at it.
Sort of a perversion of Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s “Every man is entitled to his own opinions, but not his own facts.” Except that now, the opinions that are truly disfavored are those suggesting that all the cards may not be on the table.
Suggestion: try making your comment no longer than 3 clear sentences and then (maybe) someone will read it. Also, don’t start two new subsequent threads to add in your post scripts and caveat, as I’ll just trash them.
Has no one written a song about the Comments Section? Billy Joel? Spruce Bringsteen! James Taylor, ahhh.
How about the rapper of your choice. (Not Prince.) High time that someone put the issue to song and post here, irregardless of Rules.
Needless to say, if it were not for the Comments Section, some of us would not be here [now]. We would be over there,… pretending to be square. And bye the way, FUBAR is alive and well, somewhere west of the Hudson River. We trust life goes on. We waited 24 hours before commenting on this topic. It was a toss-up. Curiosity got the better of us.
Fubar is everywhere. Rumors that he’s in Nebraska are greatly exaggerated.
For anyone who enjoyed the AtL comments, they’re still going on at AtL Surrogate, where frequent commenters are posting their own news and discussion topics. Almost 1,000 followers so far, so feel free to come by and check it out:
https://disqus.com/home/channel/atlsurrogate/recent/
Fr0zt, a question, that I sincerely can’t figure out. What content at ATL continued to bring people back? With a few exceptions, it’s entirely insipid crap, and some fails to rise to that level. So what is it? What am I not seeing there that you folks see?
If I had to guess, I’d say it came down to default choice. People had been commenting there for so long, for so regularly, they just kept going – despite that the quality level of the content had gone downhill.
From what I’ve read from many of the commentariat, they really didn’t bother reading the articles and just jumped straight to the comments. There was no need for them to jump ship without something radical to spur action. Only once comments were taken away was there motivation to go somewhere else.
I can understand that a community developed in the comments. I just wondered whether they saw what I saw.
“I just come for the comments” was a common refrain. There are some very sharp and funny people in the comments, and a lot of funny and informative discussions took place there. We’re trying to expand on that now in the link above, without having to be steered by the AtL editors. We’re only a couple weeks old, but I think it’s going pretty well so far.
Please check out the link and feel free to comment — we’d love to expand and keep it going if we can.
That’s why I left your link in (which is otherwise against my rules), as I found the comments at ATL more substantive than most of the posts. Best of luck with your crew, and I’ll check it out as well.
The real problem for these people is that the overwhelming majority of comments disagree with them even on their own ground. To moderate these comments would decimate the comments section and make the wholesale disagreement even more obvious. Instead of admitting that the attitudes of the authors are becoming increasingly more unpopular they simply call the commenters names and shut down the comments section.
Do you have any idea how much idiotic it is someone starts a comment with “The real problem…”?