> I try my best to avoid those sites now -- they don't want you to engage. In my humble experience, some sites with comment sections also don't want you to eng

> I try my best to avoid those sites now -- they don't want you to engage. In my humble experience, some sites with comment sections also don't want you to engage if you're not on their side. And I think that's more problematic, especially on news sites, because you could get the impression that the comment section was representative of the readers. Just as an anecdotal example, a couple months ago, I tried engaging in a discussion in the comment section at welt.de, online outlet of one of Germany's largest newspapers. My comments were all short, on-topic, and never personal. I provided some sources but generally a different point-of-view than the (until then few) other comments, all right-wing barroom clichés, even celebrations of refugees drowning. None of my comments was cleared, while very vile and unfounded comments continued to pour in. I tested for a while and experinced the same behaviour on almost all newspaper websites. (On some others, I was immediately attacked personally for my opinion, and that is with moderation in place.) I since blocked disqus and never looked back. Twitter has been a good alternative for me so far.