{"id":47091,"date":"2019-02-28T05:00:47","date_gmt":"2019-02-28T10:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=47091"},"modified":"2019-02-27T13:54:01","modified_gmt":"2019-02-27T18:54:01","slug":"protip-never-ever-ever-read-the-comments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2019\/02\/28\/protip-never-ever-ever-read-the-comments\/","title":{"rendered":"ProTip – Never, ever, ever<\/em> read the comments"},"content":{"rendered":"

Scott Alexander<\/a> explains why he had to ask the moderators to shut down the r\/slatestarcodex<\/code> subreddit’s Culture War thread:<\/p>\n

This post is called \u201cRIP Culture War Thread\u201d, so you may have already guessed things went south. What happened? The short version is: a bunch of people harassed and threatened me for my role in hosting it, I had a nervous breakdown, and I asked the moderators to get rid of it.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll get to the long version eventually, but first I want to stress that this isn\u2019t just my story. It\u2019s the story of everyone who\u2019s tried to host a space for political discussion on the Internet. Take the New York Times<\/em>, in particular their article Why No Comments? It\u2019s A Matter Of Resources<\/a>. Translated from corporate-speak, it basically says that unmoderated comment sections had too many \u201ctrolls\u201d, so they decided to switch to moderated comment sections only, but they don\u2019t have enough resources to moderate any controversial articles, so commenting on controversial articles is banned.<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s not just the New York Times<\/em>. In the past five years, CNN, NPR, The Atlantic<\/em>, Vice<\/em>, Bloomberg<\/em>, Motherboard<\/em>, and almost every other major news source has closed their comments \u2013 usually accompanied by weird corporate-speak about how \u201cbecause we really value conversations, we are closing our comment section forever effective immediately\u201d. People have written articles like The Comments Apocalypse<\/a>, A Brief History Of The End Of The Comments<\/a>, and Is The Era Of Reader Comments On News Websites Fading?<\/a> This raises a lot of questions.<\/p>\n

Like: I was able to find half a dozen great people to do a great job moderating the Culture War Thread 100% for free without even trying. How come some of the richest and most important news sources in the world can\u2019t find or afford a moderator?<\/p>\n

Or: can\u2019t they just hide the comments behind a content warning saying \u201cThese comments are unmoderated, read at your own risk, click to expand\u201d?<\/p>\n

This confused me until I had my own experience with the Culture War thread.<\/p>\n

The fact is, it\u2019s very easy to moderate comment sections. It\u2019s very easy to remove spam, bots, racial slurs, low-effort trolls, and abuse. I do it single-handedly on this blog\u2019s 2000+ weekly comments. r\/slatestarcodex\u2019s volunteer team of six moderators did it every day on the CW Thread, and you can scroll through week after week of multiple-thousand-post culture war thread and see how thorough a job they did.<\/p>\n

But once you remove all those things, you\u2019re left with people honestly and civilly arguing for their opinions. And that\u2019s the scariest thing of all.<\/p>\n

Some people think society should tolerate pedophilia, are obsessed with this, and can rattle off a laundry list of studies that they say justify their opinion. Some people think police officers are enforcers of oppression and this makes them valid targets for violence. Some people think immigrants are destroying the cultural cohesion necessary for a free and prosperous country. Some people think transwomen are a tool of the patriarchy trying to appropriate female spaces. Some people think Charles Murray and The Bell Curve<\/em> were right about everything. Some people think Islam represents an existential threat to the West. Some people think women are biologically less likely to be good at or interested in technology. Some people think men are biologically more violent and dangerous to children. Some people just really worry a lot about the Freemasons.<\/p>\n

Each of these views has adherents who are, no offense, smarter than you are. Each of these views has, at times, won over entire cultures so completely that disagreeing with them then was as unthinkable as agreeing with them is today. I disagree with most of them but don\u2019t want to be too harsh on any of them. Reasoning correctly about these things is excruciatingly hard, trusting consensus opinion would have led you horrifyingly wrong throughout most of the past, and other options, if they exist, are obscure and full of pitfalls. I tend to go with philosophers from Voltaire to Mill to Popper who say the only solution is to let everybody have their say and then try to figure it out in the marketplace of ideas.<\/p>\n

But none of those luminaries had to deal with online comment sections.<\/p>\n

The thing about an online comment section is that the guy who really likes pedophilia is going to start posting on every thread about sexual minorities \u201cI\u2019m glad those sexual minorities have their rights! Now it\u2019s time to start arguing for pedophile rights!\u201d followed by a ten thousand word manifesto. This person won\u2019t use any racial slurs, won\u2019t be a bot, and can probably reach the same standards of politeness and reasonable-soundingness as anyone else. Any fair moderation policy won\u2019t provide the moderator with any excuse to delete him. But it will be very embarrassing for to New York Times<\/em> to have anybody who visits their website see pro-pedophilia manifestos a bunch of the time.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo they should deal with it! That\u2019s the bargain they made when deciding to host the national conversation!\u201d<\/p>\n

No, you don\u2019t understand. It\u2019s not just the predictable and natural reputational consequences of having some embarrassing material in a branded space. It\u2019s enemy action<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Every Twitter influencer who wants to profit off of outrage culture is going to be posting 24-7 about how the New York Times<\/em> endorses pedophilia. Breitbart<\/em> or some other group that doesn\u2019t like the Times<\/em> for some reason will publish article after article on New York Times<\/em>‘ secret pro-pedophile agenda. Allowing any aspect of your brand to come anywhere near something unpopular and taboo is like a giant Christmas present for people who hate you, people who hate everybody and will take whatever targets of opportunity present themselves, and a thousand self-appointed moral crusaders and protectors of the public virtue. It doesn\u2019t matter if taboo material makes up 1% of your comment section; it will inevitably make up 100% of what people hear about your comment section<\/em> and then of what people think is in your comment section<\/em>. Finally, it will make up 100% of what people associate with you and your brand. The Chinese Robber Fallacy<\/a> is a harsh master; all you need is a tiny number of cringeworthy comments, and your political enemies, power-hungry opportunists, and 4channers just in it for the lulz can convince everyone that your entire brand is about being pro-pedophile, catering to the pedophilia demographic, and providing a platform for pedophile supporters. And if you ban the pedophiles, they\u2019ll do the same thing for the next-most-offensive opinion in your comments, and then the next-most-offensive, until you\u2019ve censored everything except \u201cOur benevolent leadership really is doing a great job today, aren\u2019t they?\u201d and the comment section becomes a mockery of its original goal.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’ll allow one exception to the rule I provided in the headline: the comments at David Thompson’s blog<\/a> are always worth reading, but I have to assume that David or countless unpaid minions must work very hard indeed to maintain the quality of comments that get posted. I’ve never actively encouraged commenting here at Quotulatiousness<\/em>, and I don’t spend a lot of time on the various social media sites as I have a low tolerance for the kinds of “conversation” you tend to find there.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Scott Alexander explains why he had to ask the moderators to shut down the r\/slatestarcodex subreddit’s Culture War thread: This post is called \u201cRIP Culture War Thread\u201d, so you may have already guessed things went south. What happened? The short version is: a bunch of people harassed and threatened me for my role in hosting […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,28,53,15],"tags":[58,213,593],"class_list":["post-47091","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","category-media","category-politics","category-technology","tag-internet","tag-newspapers","tag-socialmedia"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-cfx","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47091","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47091"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47091\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47095,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47091\/revisions\/47095"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47091"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47091"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47091"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}