Salon Proposing Censorship of Comments on Online News

[andersonnnunes]

[...] comments sections are not a zeitgeist of our culture, nor are they a populist reflection of public sentiment. Selection bias and the online disinhibition effect means that the voices of cruelty and hate will always reign, and the voices of reason will sink — or merely not post to begin with. As slanted cauldrons of hate, comments sections do not epitomize the Western ideal of "free speech" in any way. Time to end them.

Link to the full article.

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I think that removing comment sections won't matter, people will just post their comments on their preferred silos and bubbles.

Which is great, as I would rather deal with the disinhibition effect on full force than the inhibition effect that governamental institutions create with full force offline and online.

 

[Houseman]

Whenever I open a news article or something, I always scroll to the bottom to see if there are any comments. If there are, that's where I get the "real truth". If there aren't, I close the page immediately.

If they had a comments section, I'm sure that they would be getting laughed at, and I'm sure that those comments would be removed.

The benefit of the internet is primarily one of communication. People are trying to stop that, it seems. People want to control the conversation, so that everyone else just shuts up and listens.

I'd rather not have separate silos for everything, because silos are easy to destroy, as I'm sure we've seen.

It's sad, I've begun to look at everything in terms of a "culture war". This type of censorship, controlling of information, and these attacks of free speech are all weapons of war. I don't think "we're" going to win. There's too much propaganda to oppose.

 

[RiseOfTheWhiteWolf]

This actually sucks ass because for some people, the bubble or preferred silo is some news outlet. Their only exposure to a "real world" take on any particular issue they are reading about, is the comments section.

It goes for a lot of German outlets too - the comments sections of Spiegel Online, Welt, etc are varied and in most cases better than the columns themselves. If everyone followed suit on this it would be a big loss for sure. Of course Salons comments sections were probably a mix of soyboy and poltard stereotypes, but thats just because their site is fucking horrible and anyone with a 3 digit IQ will instantly click off after taking one glance at the homepage.

 

[Signa]

This has been common practice for some time now. they don't even allow comments on pretty much any article I read and want to comment on.

 

[andersonnnunes]

The benefit of the internet is primarily one of communication. People are trying to stop that, it seems. People want to control the conversation, so that everyone else just shuts up and listens.

It's sad, I've begun to look at everything in terms of a "culture war". This type of censorship, controlling of information, and these attacks of free speech are all weapons of war. I don't think "we're" going to win. There's too much propaganda to oppose.

That is reality here in Brazil already.

 

[andersonnnunes]

removing comment sections won't matter, people will just post their comments on their preferred silos and bubbles

Haven't tried Gab yet, but that may be about to change.

 

[Houseman]

Yeah, that comments browser extension is a neat idea.