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I'm starting to think that comment sections on news sites are a really bad idea. At first I thought NPR and the like were cowards for removing theirs. It's ba

I'm starting to think that comment sections on news sites are a really bad idea. At first I thought NPR and the like were cowards for removing theirs. It's bad enough that NYT can be pretty biased on its own, but the comment sections are always full of low-tier thinking that just push whatever narrative is currently in the Overton window. What I find distressing is how people remark that a telecom and advertising giant acting as a de facto government over the public square isn't a violation of free speech principles because they're a "private business", as if that's an original thought that's profound. Funny how people say "it's a private business" when it suits their own political interests. We wouldn't blindly allow company-owned cities or states to pass laws, especially vague or undefined ones, that potentially violate our rights, so why do we allow "states" in cyberspace to be run in such a way? Ban people promoting violence? Sure, why not. I'm as against hate and violence as the next person. But not only is censoring "hate speech" becoming a slippery slope at the company level, it's bad for the public in general because it sets a greater precedent for what the big corporations that run our everyday lives can tell us what we can or cannot do, and with no forgiveness. I don't find it hard to imagine a world where individuals can be instantly and permanently banned from doing everyday things, just like they are on YouTube, because they said or did something off the platform.

AndrewStephens 7y ago
I was shocked when news sites started publishing comments as a matter of course. They worked so hard to research and create a 2000 word article that accurately reflects the world (in accordance to their editorial guidelines) using their good name - and then let fReEtHiNkErChAd and 2020BloodInTheStreets chime in at the end. It would be OK if they strictly moderated the comments, but few sites seem to do that.
- lostmymind66 7y ago
  "They worked so hard to research and create a 2000 word article that accurately reflects the world" I find this laughable. Many recent articles I've seen are designed to get clicks and have nothing to do with good journalism or research beyond what someone can get from behind a keyboard.
  - theonlyklas 7y ago
    A lot that I've read in the past few years read like AI has written them. It wouldn't surprise me if major news publishers removed writing positions and replaced them with AI.
  - kazinator 7y ago
    Okay: they worked so hard to contrive a 2000 word sequence to get clicks using machine learning and whatnot - and then let fReEtHiNkErChAd and 2020BloodInTheStreets chime in at the end.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - TeMPOraL 7y ago
      Because fReEtHiNkErChAd and 2020BloodInTheStreets will each piss some readers off and please others, polarizing the topic and inviting others to participate, thus increasing pageviews and ad exposure. It worked well for a while, but with the growth of Twitter mobs it eventually backfired.
- bityard 7y ago
  > They worked so hard to research and create a 2000 word article that accurately reflects the world (in accordance to their editorial guidelines) using their good name I'm not sure which news sites you read but most of the ones I've seen count only as journalism in a very vague and abstract sense. The information is thin, the writing poor, and major important questions go unanswered and ignored. If there is indeed any point to following the news on a daily basis (and there is good evidence to suggest there is not), the quality of most new sources is atrocious enough that none of it is worth my time. (The exception here is the occasional piece of very well done investigative journalism.) But, in regard to comments, they do it for the same reason that Hacker News or any other site has a comments section: community engagement. This is not necessary a bad thing but it comes with the responsibility to _moderate_ the resulting community and almost every site drops the ball on this.
  - gfodor 7y ago
    Most journalism is close enough to propaganda these days that the least they could do is open comments so that the public can correct the record.
    - creaghpatr 7y ago
      Comments do add additional context, it's just a situation by situation basis of whether they are useful. HN comments tend to be useful, YT comments are occasionally useful but mostly garbage.
    - Faark 7y ago
      If you look at the comment sections of actual propaganda sites... well, you won't see Breitbart comments "correct the record". Quite the opposite, they are an important part of the local echo chamber. The only good they can do is giving others an unfiltered view into the minds of those communities.
      - rabidrat 7y ago
        That is interesting, I wonder if we could use the level of disagreement in the comment sections to detect propaganda vs news sites.
- kazinator 7y ago
  Here is a crazy wild-assed concept: letters to the editor, published in the next issue.
  - EvilTerran 7y ago
    The Atlantic have taken that principle & modernised it: every article ends not with a comments section, but an invitation to email them your thoughts; then they publish the cream of the crop on https://www.theatlantic.com/letters/ https://www.theatlantic.com/letters/.
  - repolfx 7y ago
    Doesn't work if the newspaper publishes total nonsense and smarter or better informed comments point that out, which is 50% of the value of comments. I'm pretty sure a big part of the reason the Guardian stopped opening comments on most stories was the cost of 'moderation', except the reason their moderation costs were so high is that their moderators would routinely plough through comments by hand to remove people pointing out mistakes or absurd statements by the journalists, and as the Guardian changed over the years the articles became ever more extremist, so that started to be most comments. That is, they defined making their own staff look bad as abuse (regardless of whether it was written in vitriolic style). Even now if you go read one of the few open threads they have, you can find commenters pointing out logical or factual problems with the column.
- mistermann 7y ago
  > accurately reflects the world Sometimes, to some degree, and sometimes not. The level and consistency of accuracy varies per organization, per individual reporter, per story, and per person doing the judgement of "accuracy".
- vpmpaul 7y ago
  My experience is the exact opposite. I often skim the article and find that commenters are better informed than the author and provide more relevant information.
  - eeeuo 7y ago
    Unlike news companies, commentators do not gain monetary value from sensationalism. Authors of articles are generally more informed than their pieces suggest, but their editors step in and make the story "pop" for readers in order to generate clicks. This often involves removing nuance. I believe that most major news organizations make an honest effort to be factual, but there's a lot of room within the facts to be misleading. A commentator that is an expert in the field is not constrained by an editor, and can in a few paragraphs give a more realistic and accurate assessment of the phenomenon. When I read articles about things in which I'm not knowledgeable, I don't trust the conclusions until I see high quality comments(or tweets) that confirm the thesis of the article.
  - bradstewart 7y ago
    How do you know the commenters are better informed?
  - baud147258 7y ago
    One website where the comments are usually more interesting than the article is the register, which is mostly IT/high-tech-related news. But when I say more interesting, it's usually because they provide more context, another angle, more information or some humor.
- LifeLiverTransp 7y ago
  Comments would be better if there was a enforced delay in the conversation, and you would have to sign off on what you wrote. 24h laters, the rage of the past would be seen indignified by many.
yoodenvranx 7y ago
> I'm starting to think that comment sections on news sites are a really bad idea I have no idea how it is in other countries but in Germany the comment sections in every single newspaper is _horrible_, especially when it is articles about refugees, climate change and similar topics.
- Nasrudith 7y ago
  That is sadly the way anywhere mainstream without heavy moderation. The scary thing about Youtube comments isn't that they are extra stupid because they aren't - they are the norm and essentially what happens when a representative sample of the population is available.
  - munk-a 7y ago
    Just because the majority of the population has the ability to comment doesn't mean the majority participates. Voluntary participation like that tends to attract people with strong opinions on the position under debate - especially people who disagree with the position upheld by the article and especially people who feel like theirs is the minority opinion.
- repolfx 7y ago
  I suspect you're defining horrible comments as, "comments expressing views I don't like and wish didn't exist". Germany has particularly extreme and unusual policies regarding migrants/asylum seekers/refugees, climate change and a few other such things. Is it any surprise that extreme views in one direction trigger extreme views in the other?
gervase 7y ago
The advantage of removing (or at least, humans actively moderating) comments is that it pushes discussion back to face-to-face (or at least, more direct and personal) channels and restricts the anonymity of commentary. This has a few benefits, namely: * Self-moderating: Such conversations require a certain level of decorum, since these are presumably people you interact with every day. The likelihood of calling your desk mate a Nazi, racist, race traitor, etc. to their face are astronomically smaller than when it's cloaked in anonymity, since there may be consequences to your commentary. * Self-authenticating: It reduces the efficacy of message amplification, since the real world serves as an out-of-band identity authentication mechanism. * Self-regulating: It's easier, cheaper, and less risky for the hosting site, since they no longer have any enforcement role to play in the discussion itself (beyond the original slant when presenting the information, e.g. by news organizations). Of course, this doesn't address the problems of sites which are inherently designed to do one-to-many broadcasting and discussion, such as Youtube or Reddit. How would these sites look without comments at all, or with a very strict attestation/vouching system? Although HN follows a similar model vis-à-vis discussion and broadcasting, the active HN moderation is pretty good, at least good enough to maintain a relatively high-quality discourse and removing very low-quality discussion. However, this is difficult to scale and relatively expensive.
decoyworker 7y ago
They can choose to not be a platform for anything that they want. You don't have a right to that platform. Forcing YouTube to leave everything up infringes on their rights to run their site as they want.
- elliekelly 7y ago
  To play devil's advocate to the "private platform" argument: we force tv networks and radio stations to give equal air time to all presidential candidates.[1] NBC is a private a company but if they permit one candidate to host SNL they must give the other candidate(s) an equivalent opportunity so as not to unfairly sway public opinion. I don't necessarily think that "infringes" on NBC's right to run their platform as they want. They're still given the option of whether or not they want to wade into politics on their airways but once they do they're obligated to open their platform to both sides. Now you could argue that Donald Trump expertly exploited exceptions to the "equal-time rule" in order to get much more coverage than his competition, but that's more to do with the structure of the law than the spirit of what it's trying to accomplish. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal-time_rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal-time_rule
  - tasty_freeze 7y ago
    Broadcasters have purchased a license from the government to use those airwaves, and have to abide by rules. In contrast, anyone can put up a website. That is why broadcasters are more constrained in their behavior.
  - RetroFuture 7y ago
    The issue with TV is that it's not "their airways". The "airways" are public property so to speak, and the TV license grants TV networks use of that public property on certain conditions, one being political messages. Youtube, or any other site uses no public property in that way so they are not, and should not be beholden to the same rules.
- joshuaheard 7y ago
  YouTube has become a mass communication platform, more akin to the telephone company than say a magazine. A magazine has editorial control over what it publishes, and can decide what to put into its content. A telephone company has no say over what is said over its phone lines. YouTube is just asking to be regulated in such a way as the phone companies. And it should be regulated to follow the First Amendment as a mass communication platform, even though it is a private company.
ap3 7y ago
Comments are the worst part of the web TY for reading my comment
emiliobumachar 7y ago
Related: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/02/22/rip-culture-war-thread/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/02/22/rip-culture-war-thread... >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 “I’m glad those sexual minorities have their rights! Now it’s time to start arguing for pedophile rights!” followed by a ten thousand word manifesto. This person won’t use any racial slurs, won’t be a bot, and can probably reach the same standards of politeness and reasonable-soundingness as anyone else. Any fair moderation policy won’t provide the moderator with any excuse to delete him. But it will be very embarrassing for to New York Times to have anybody who visits their website see pro-pedophilia manifestos a bunch of the time. “So they should deal with it! That’s the bargain they made when deciding to host the national conversation!” No, you don’t understand. It’s not just the predictable and natural reputational consequences of having some embarrassing material in a branded space. It’s enemy action. Every Twitter influencer who wants to profit off of outrage culture is going to be posting 24-7 about how the New York Times endorses pedophilia. Breitbart or some other group that doesn’t like the Times for some reason will publish article after article on New York Times‘ 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’t 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 and then of what people think is in your comment section. Finally, it will make up 100% of what people associate with you and your brand. The Chinese Robber Fallacy 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’ll do the same thing for the next-most-offensive opinion in your comments, and then the next-most-offensive, until you’ve censored everything except “Our benevolent leadership really is doing a great job today, aren’t they?” and the comment section becomes a mockery of its original goal. [...] >Fourth, I want anybody else trying to host “the national conversation” to have a clear idea of the risks. If you plan to be anything less than maximally censorious, consider keeping your identity anonymous, and think about potential weak links in your chain (ie hosts, advertisers, payment processors, etc). I’m not saying you necessarily need to go full darknet arms merchant. Just keep in mind that lots of people will try to stop you, and they’ve had a really high success rate so far.
anigbrowl 7y ago
I was a huge proponent of this in the early days of the web and was leading the crusade for reader engagement, championing the idea of anonymous commentary and a pure marketplace of ideas. Well, it turns out I had an over-optimistic view of people.
- asdf21 7y ago
  What no one really wants to admit here on YC is that the userbase here is something like the top .01% of (intelligence / literacy / analytical skills). Hell, even reddit, as low-brow as that has gotten, is still top 1% easily. But there are still plenty of staggeringly oblivious views in both places. It's hard to admit that dichotomy, because when we realize that the top 1% or .01% can still be so ignorant, we also gradually realize that we are all probably in for a lot of trouble moving forward, particularly if and when resource wars become a bit more widespread than they are now.
  - brighton36 7y ago
    This. It has to be said. Thank you.
  - basementcat 7y ago
    The major consequence of this for me is that it has caused me to reevaluate my views on representative democracy. Edit: As a clarification, while I still tend toward a preference for representative democracy, I now acknowledge that it is possible for a fruitful and productive society to flourish in systems that some may label as an "oppressive dictatorship".
    - anigbrowl 7y ago
      I abandoned that idea a while ago. I think we could move toward a wikiocracy, which would have problems of its own but for which we have a working prototype that is reasonably transparent, responsive, and accessible and delivered a significant public good in a relatively short time frame.
dageshi 7y ago
Is a privately owned museum a "public square"? Or a sports stadium owned by a private company? Or a Cinema? Or a threatre? No, neither is youtube. It's a place the public visit not a piece of public infrastructure. Repeating "public square" over and over again does not make it so.
- icxa 7y ago
  Then why does it get the legal benefits of being a "neutral platform"?
  - dageshi 7y ago
    Because "neutral platform" in the case of content hosting hasn't ever meant no rules. Youtube has always had rules.
  - schoen 7y ago
    The main legal benefit is §230 of the Communications Decency Act, which has never required platforms to refrain from exercising editorial control in order to receive immunity (in fact, one motivation for this law was to encourage platforms to engage in exercising editorial control without incurring liability for doing this). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communications_Decency_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communicati... (I can see political pressure now and in the future to say that some platforms should have some kind of neutrality and/or transparency obligation in order to get this immunity -- but under current U.S. law, they don't.)
- HBKXNCUO 7y ago
  Do any of those places host a substantial portion of the public political debate? If any of those places banned people, would that significantly reduce the ability of those people to meaningfully participated in the public political debate?
  - dageshi 7y ago
    Probably not, but then I don't think it's a like to like comparison, youtube is more of a broadcast system than anything, it's closer to TV or Newspapers were pre youtube and nobody has the automatic right to TV airtime or to be printed in a newspaper.
CodiePetersen 7y ago
Although any hateful speech is terrible of course, I think censoring like this is a bad idea. Like other conversations about freedom of speech on HN it will eventually lead to talking about banning non hateful but extreme ideas like flat earth and anti vax. While ridiculous as they are, I think it would be equally ridiculous to ban them. What's the line you draw when you decide what gets to be promoted. Maybe certain religious ideas or ideas criticising religions? I do disagree with your private business comment though. It is a private business and they can do what they want to an extent. You don't tell a news paper who they have to let write articles. But I think the problem is that youtube is so large and the service so imporant that it might as well be a government deciding rights. It's not just youtube there are a lot of tech giants that powerful. I think when it's obvious they are that powerful and important it's time to break them up. I mean hell the bread company my step dad works at even had to go through a process to see if they would be too big with a recent purchase. But yet tech companies have been getting away with this sort of unchecked growth. They are global powers with dwindling competition. Break them up. Reintroduce competition.
- convivialdingo 7y ago
  Agreed. The only comment I would add is that, unlike newspapers, these companies receive a broad immunity through the laws so that they can operate without fear of legal retribution. Even though they operate as private companies, I would argue that they still have a mandate to the public good as part of their operations.
- Frondo 7y ago
  I'm also okay banning anti-vax ideas, in defense of the community in general, and in defense in specific of those vulnerable few who can't be immunized and rely on herd immunity. Foregoing vaccination imposes an as-yet-unaccounted externality on the community; you put everyone at risk by not vaccinating yourself or your kids, and there's no way for the vulnerable (those relying on herd immunity) to know who around them will put them at risk. It goes way beyond an individual choice, to vaccinate or not. That decision has impacts far beyond the individual's life.
  - 7y ago
anbop 7y ago
I agree with your comment but find it rambling, so I’ll concur with this: If free speech is a right worth protecting from the government, it’s worth protecting against equally powerful corporations.
- nybble41 7y ago
  > If free speech is a right worth protecting from the government, it’s worth protecting against equally powerful corporations. The right of free speech is that you can say what you want without violent repercussions, such as fines, prison time, or capital punishment. Corporations and individuals already aren't allowed to do any of that, so no additional protection is needed. Governments are singled out specifically because they do not follow the same rules as everyone else—asserting that violence is a "legitimate" means of achieving arbitrary goals.
  - iamnothere 7y ago
    > The right of free speech is that you can say what you want without violent repercussions, such as fines, prison time, or capital punishment. This is merely one view of free speech; many people actively disagree with this view. You can't take a contested human-defined concept like freedom of speech and say "this only means X, case closed." I mean, you can, but nobody has to agree with you.
    - esailija 7y ago
      The view that free speech should protect you even from the most trivial consequences like being banned from a private platform is completely unreasonable and ridiculous. Doesn't matter that there are people that hold that opinion, that's a weak argument for it.
      - belorn 7y ago
        A lot of people combine free speech with anti-discrimination. Speech get attached to identity and from there a ban becomes discrimination. Three people walk into a Hotel. A priest, a advocate for the left, and a advocate for the right. Each three talks about the groups they define as "us", and how bad those "others" are. Can the hotel owner deny hosting and ban one of them based on the identity and vies of the person?
geofft 7y ago
> We wouldn't blindly allow company-owned cities or states to pass laws, especially vague or undefined ones, that potentially violate our rights, so why do we allow "states" in cyberspace to be run in such a way? Actual states have a monopoly on violence, and can deprive me of life, liberty, and property. So I want them to have as few excuses to do that as possible. These "states" in cyberspace can do none of that, so it's significantly less of a problem if they don't embrace freedom of speech as an ideal. (I guess it depends somewhat on whether you see free speech as an inherent virtue or as a safety valve against government oppression. I've been leaning towards the latter personally.)
qrbLPHiKpiux 7y ago
I wish all internet comment sections be removed. If you have something to say, promote your own website. Yelp is the worst.
saynay 7y ago
I'm wondering why YouTube doesn't have something like Reddit's "quarantine" where certain videos and/or channels are blocked from the recommendation algorithms without being outright banned, but still available for those who specifically search for them.
- scottlocklin 7y ago
  They do. Now they're taking the additional step of just deleting them. FWIIW this censorious crap cost them $70b in market cap last quarter. Looking forward to next quarter.
- r3bl 7y ago
  Here, try this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8beSkkKJ_0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8beSkkKJ_0 No comments, likes, dislikes, and no recommendations on the sidebar. It can still be viewed if you accept the risk, and can be found using the search bar or by scrolling through the channel.
  - tomp 7y ago
    Funny enough, it's available in the US, but not in many EU countries (I tried Italy, Spain and Belgium).
    - Whatarethese 7y ago
      Its gone now.
cynoclast 7y ago
>Ban people promoting violence? There's a constitutional amendment between the first and the third that is specifically for turning a misbehaving government off and back on, specifically using violence, whether that government likes it or not, because violence is the only thing that tyrants bend the knee for. And free speech is more important than your and my feelings combined, and one person's hate speech is another's common sense, and vice versa. Who gets to decide?
woliveirajr 7y ago
Funny how last XKCD refers to NPR and comment sections: https://xkcd.com/2159/ https://xkcd.com/2159/
drewcoo 7y ago
What strange irony that you post about it on HN, effectively a detached comment section for a news site. Was that intended? Regardless, I think you're making the tacit assertion that comments for the news belong somewhere. How? How should its censorship work? Would that take care of the problem?
- munk-a 7y ago
  There definitely is an effect to white-labeling and brand confidence. When comments are hosted by an organization - regardless of the specific legal implications and understandings - people assume the brand has some ownership of the contents of those comments... No matter how big of a font is used to say "The opinions expressed below belong solely to their owners and do not reflect the views of <BRAND>."
empath75 7y ago
Generally, true statements are not profound or original, but sometimes still need to be repeated when people assert the opposite. “The world is round” is neither an original or profound statement and yet people still need to say it periodically.
xfitm3 7y ago
Am I the only one who really enjoys shitty YouTube comments?
siruncledrew 7y ago
1. Comments sections on prominent, generalized websites (non-niche sites) are oftentimes not even worth reading. Buried beneath idiotic nonsense, spam/scams, edgelords, trolls, bots, and narcissists are the actual few insightful comments that are refreshing bits of value. It's like panning for gold in a river. -- 2. There's not going to be a fair judge of what counts as "censorable content" when two opposite sites of the debate are each arguing in favor of their side. It's like why referees exist in sports. Of course Team A will say "No way! That wasn't a foul, I didn't touch them!", while Team B says "It was definitely a foul, I got hit!". To anyone who's heard "boos or cheers" from the crowd at a sports game, it's not a shocker the response centers around which calls benefits their team. -- 3. With regards to the "freedom of speech" rights and personal liberties - how much of a shit does a monopoly-level, multi-national corporation give about strictly adhering to government-defined "rights"? What is the business cost of vehemently adhering to potentially-gray-area covenants vs. saying "Yeahh.. fuck that shit it's too much effort". Finagling laws to suit business needs is what huge companies pay teams of people to do already. -- 4. YouTube is like a factory farm. The more users are bunched into YouTube, the more money Google makes from advertising. It's all a numbers game. Google has no incentive to change the setup of the farm, so to speak, when what they have has been paying off to keep the service free and hold market share. Unless someone has a particularly large audience, the main solution to complaints from random, non-paying users is: "Deal with it". -- 5. Ban specific items that are violent, devious, or dangerous? Sure. Banning "DIY drinking bleach cures autism" is not the same as banning something more nuanced like "trailer trash ride dirt bikes on the interstate" on the grounds a specific subgroup has a problem. As customer service will show you, people will always find something to complain about. If Google came out with, "We will ban whatever we feel like based on what disagrees with our superior, self-selected ideology", that would be a very different story. That's not much better than a dictatorship banning anything that disagrees with the State.

AndrewStephens 7y ago

I was shocked when news sites started publishing comments as a matter of course. They worked so hard to research and create a 2000 word article that accurately reflects the world (in accordance to their editorial guidelines) using their good name - and then let fReEtHiNkErChAd and 2020BloodInTheStreets chime in at the end. It would be OK if they strictly moderated the comments, but few sites seem to do that.

lostmymind66 7y ago
"They worked so hard to research and create a 2000 word article that accurately reflects the world" I find this laughable. Many recent articles I've seen are designed to get clicks and have nothing to do with good journalism or research beyond what someone can get from behind a keyboard.
- theonlyklas 7y ago
  A lot that I've read in the past few years read like AI has written them. It wouldn't surprise me if major news publishers removed writing positions and replaced them with AI.
- kazinator 7y ago
  Okay: they worked so hard to contrive a 2000 word sequence to get clicks using machine learning and whatnot - and then let fReEtHiNkErChAd and 2020BloodInTheStreets chime in at the end.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    Because fReEtHiNkErChAd and 2020BloodInTheStreets will each piss some readers off and please others, polarizing the topic and inviting others to participate, thus increasing pageviews and ad exposure. It worked well for a while, but with the growth of Twitter mobs it eventually backfired.
bityard 7y ago
> They worked so hard to research and create a 2000 word article that accurately reflects the world (in accordance to their editorial guidelines) using their good name I'm not sure which news sites you read but most of the ones I've seen count only as journalism in a very vague and abstract sense. The information is thin, the writing poor, and major important questions go unanswered and ignored. If there is indeed any point to following the news on a daily basis (and there is good evidence to suggest there is not), the quality of most new sources is atrocious enough that none of it is worth my time. (The exception here is the occasional piece of very well done investigative journalism.) But, in regard to comments, they do it for the same reason that Hacker News or any other site has a comments section: community engagement. This is not necessary a bad thing but it comes with the responsibility to _moderate_ the resulting community and almost every site drops the ball on this.
- gfodor 7y ago
  Most journalism is close enough to propaganda these days that the least they could do is open comments so that the public can correct the record.
  - creaghpatr 7y ago
    Comments do add additional context, it's just a situation by situation basis of whether they are useful. HN comments tend to be useful, YT comments are occasionally useful but mostly garbage.
  - Faark 7y ago
    If you look at the comment sections of actual propaganda sites... well, you won't see Breitbart comments "correct the record". Quite the opposite, they are an important part of the local echo chamber. The only good they can do is giving others an unfiltered view into the minds of those communities.
    - rabidrat 7y ago
      That is interesting, I wonder if we could use the level of disagreement in the comment sections to detect propaganda vs news sites.
kazinator 7y ago
Here is a crazy wild-assed concept: letters to the editor, published in the next issue.
- EvilTerran 7y ago
  The Atlantic have taken that principle & modernised it: every article ends not with a comments section, but an invitation to email them your thoughts; then they publish the cream of the crop on https://www.theatlantic.com/letters/ https://www.theatlantic.com/letters/.
- repolfx 7y ago
  Doesn't work if the newspaper publishes total nonsense and smarter or better informed comments point that out, which is 50% of the value of comments. I'm pretty sure a big part of the reason the Guardian stopped opening comments on most stories was the cost of 'moderation', except the reason their moderation costs were so high is that their moderators would routinely plough through comments by hand to remove people pointing out mistakes or absurd statements by the journalists, and as the Guardian changed over the years the articles became ever more extremist, so that started to be most comments. That is, they defined making their own staff look bad as abuse (regardless of whether it was written in vitriolic style). Even now if you go read one of the few open threads they have, you can find commenters pointing out logical or factual problems with the column.
mistermann 7y ago
> accurately reflects the world Sometimes, to some degree, and sometimes not. The level and consistency of accuracy varies per organization, per individual reporter, per story, and per person doing the judgement of "accuracy".
vpmpaul 7y ago
My experience is the exact opposite. I often skim the article and find that commenters are better informed than the author and provide more relevant information.
- eeeuo 7y ago
  Unlike news companies, commentators do not gain monetary value from sensationalism. Authors of articles are generally more informed than their pieces suggest, but their editors step in and make the story "pop" for readers in order to generate clicks. This often involves removing nuance. I believe that most major news organizations make an honest effort to be factual, but there's a lot of room within the facts to be misleading. A commentator that is an expert in the field is not constrained by an editor, and can in a few paragraphs give a more realistic and accurate assessment of the phenomenon. When I read articles about things in which I'm not knowledgeable, I don't trust the conclusions until I see high quality comments(or tweets) that confirm the thesis of the article.
- bradstewart 7y ago
  How do you know the commenters are better informed?
- baud147258 7y ago
  One website where the comments are usually more interesting than the article is the register, which is mostly IT/high-tech-related news. But when I say more interesting, it's usually because they provide more context, another angle, more information or some humor.
LifeLiverTransp 7y ago
Comments would be better if there was a enforced delay in the conversation, and you would have to sign off on what you wrote. 24h laters, the rage of the past would be seen indignified by many.

yoodenvranx 7y ago

> I'm starting to think that comment sections on news sites are a really bad idea I have no idea how it is in other countries but in Germany the comment sections in every single newspaper is _horrible_, especially when it is articles about refugees, climate change and similar topics.

Nasrudith 7y ago
That is sadly the way anywhere mainstream without heavy moderation. The scary thing about Youtube comments isn't that they are extra stupid because they aren't - they are the norm and essentially what happens when a representative sample of the population is available.
- munk-a 7y ago
  Just because the majority of the population has the ability to comment doesn't mean the majority participates. Voluntary participation like that tends to attract people with strong opinions on the position under debate - especially people who disagree with the position upheld by the article and especially people who feel like theirs is the minority opinion.
repolfx 7y ago
I suspect you're defining horrible comments as, "comments expressing views I don't like and wish didn't exist". Germany has particularly extreme and unusual policies regarding migrants/asylum seekers/refugees, climate change and a few other such things. Is it any surprise that extreme views in one direction trigger extreme views in the other?

gervase 7y ago

The advantage of removing (or at least, humans actively moderating) comments is that it pushes discussion back to face-to-face (or at least, more direct and personal) channels and restricts the anonymity of commentary. This has a few benefits, namely: * Self-moderating: Such conversations require a certain level of decorum, since these are presumably people you interact with every day. The likelihood of calling your desk mate a Nazi, racist, race traitor, etc. to their face are astronomically smaller than when it's cloaked in anonymity, since there may be consequences to your commentary. * Self-authenticating: It reduces the efficacy of message amplification, since the real world serves as an out-of-band identity authentication mechanism. * Self-regulating: It's easier, cheaper, and less risky for the hosting site, since they no longer have any enforcement role to play in the discussion itself (beyond the original slant when presenting the information, e.g. by news organizations). Of course, this doesn't address the problems of sites which are inherently designed to do one-to-many broadcasting and discussion, such as Youtube or Reddit. How would these sites look without comments at all, or with a very strict attestation/vouching system? Although HN follows a similar model vis-à-vis discussion and broadcasting, the active HN moderation is pretty good, at least good enough to maintain a relatively high-quality discourse and removing very low-quality discussion. However, this is difficult to scale and relatively expensive.

decoyworker 7y ago

They can choose to not be a platform for anything that they want. You don't have a right to that platform. Forcing YouTube to leave everything up infringes on their rights to run their site as they want.

elliekelly 7y ago
To play devil's advocate to the "private platform" argument: we force tv networks and radio stations to give equal air time to all presidential candidates.[1] NBC is a private a company but if they permit one candidate to host SNL they must give the other candidate(s) an equivalent opportunity so as not to unfairly sway public opinion. I don't necessarily think that "infringes" on NBC's right to run their platform as they want. They're still given the option of whether or not they want to wade into politics on their airways but once they do they're obligated to open their platform to both sides. Now you could argue that Donald Trump expertly exploited exceptions to the "equal-time rule" in order to get much more coverage than his competition, but that's more to do with the structure of the law than the spirit of what it's trying to accomplish. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal-time_rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal-time_rule
- tasty_freeze 7y ago
  Broadcasters have purchased a license from the government to use those airwaves, and have to abide by rules. In contrast, anyone can put up a website. That is why broadcasters are more constrained in their behavior.
- RetroFuture 7y ago
  The issue with TV is that it's not "their airways". The "airways" are public property so to speak, and the TV license grants TV networks use of that public property on certain conditions, one being political messages. Youtube, or any other site uses no public property in that way so they are not, and should not be beholden to the same rules.
joshuaheard 7y ago
YouTube has become a mass communication platform, more akin to the telephone company than say a magazine. A magazine has editorial control over what it publishes, and can decide what to put into its content. A telephone company has no say over what is said over its phone lines. YouTube is just asking to be regulated in such a way as the phone companies. And it should be regulated to follow the First Amendment as a mass communication platform, even though it is a private company.

ap3 7y ago

Comments are the worst part of the web TY for reading my comment

emiliobumachar 7y ago

Related: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/02/22/rip-culture-war-thread/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/02/22/rip-culture-war-thread... >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 “I’m glad those sexual minorities have their rights! Now it’s time to start arguing for pedophile rights!” followed by a ten thousand word manifesto. This person won’t use any racial slurs, won’t be a bot, and can probably reach the same standards of politeness and reasonable-soundingness as anyone else. Any fair moderation policy won’t provide the moderator with any excuse to delete him. But it will be very embarrassing for to New York Times to have anybody who visits their website see pro-pedophilia manifestos a bunch of the time. “So they should deal with it! That’s the bargain they made when deciding to host the national conversation!” No, you don’t understand. It’s not just the predictable and natural reputational consequences of having some embarrassing material in a branded space. It’s enemy action. Every Twitter influencer who wants to profit off of outrage culture is going to be posting 24-7 about how the New York Times endorses pedophilia. Breitbart or some other group that doesn’t like the Times for some reason will publish article after article on New York Times‘ 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’t 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 and then of what people think is in your comment section. Finally, it will make up 100% of what people associate with you and your brand. The Chinese Robber Fallacy 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’ll do the same thing for the next-most-offensive opinion in your comments, and then the next-most-offensive, until you’ve censored everything except “Our benevolent leadership really is doing a great job today, aren’t they?” and the comment section becomes a mockery of its original goal. [...] >Fourth, I want anybody else trying to host “the national conversation” to have a clear idea of the risks. If you plan to be anything less than maximally censorious, consider keeping your identity anonymous, and think about potential weak links in your chain (ie hosts, advertisers, payment processors, etc). I’m not saying you necessarily need to go full darknet arms merchant. Just keep in mind that lots of people will try to stop you, and they’ve had a really high success rate so far.

anigbrowl 7y ago

I was a huge proponent of this in the early days of the web and was leading the crusade for reader engagement, championing the idea of anonymous commentary and a pure marketplace of ideas. Well, it turns out I had an over-optimistic view of people.

asdf21 7y ago
What no one really wants to admit here on YC is that the userbase here is something like the top .01% of (intelligence / literacy / analytical skills). Hell, even reddit, as low-brow as that has gotten, is still top 1% easily. But there are still plenty of staggeringly oblivious views in both places. It's hard to admit that dichotomy, because when we realize that the top 1% or .01% can still be so ignorant, we also gradually realize that we are all probably in for a lot of trouble moving forward, particularly if and when resource wars become a bit more widespread than they are now.
- brighton36 7y ago
  This. It has to be said. Thank you.
- basementcat 7y ago
  The major consequence of this for me is that it has caused me to reevaluate my views on representative democracy. Edit: As a clarification, while I still tend toward a preference for representative democracy, I now acknowledge that it is possible for a fruitful and productive society to flourish in systems that some may label as an "oppressive dictatorship".
  - anigbrowl 7y ago
    I abandoned that idea a while ago. I think we could move toward a wikiocracy, which would have problems of its own but for which we have a working prototype that is reasonably transparent, responsive, and accessible and delivered a significant public good in a relatively short time frame.

dageshi 7y ago

Is a privately owned museum a "public square"? Or a sports stadium owned by a private company? Or a Cinema? Or a threatre? No, neither is youtube. It's a place the public visit not a piece of public infrastructure. Repeating "public square" over and over again does not make it so.

icxa 7y ago
Then why does it get the legal benefits of being a "neutral platform"?
- dageshi 7y ago
  Because "neutral platform" in the case of content hosting hasn't ever meant no rules. Youtube has always had rules.
- schoen 7y ago
  The main legal benefit is §230 of the Communications Decency Act, which has never required platforms to refrain from exercising editorial control in order to receive immunity (in fact, one motivation for this law was to encourage platforms to engage in exercising editorial control without incurring liability for doing this). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communications_Decency_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communicati... (I can see political pressure now and in the future to say that some platforms should have some kind of neutrality and/or transparency obligation in order to get this immunity -- but under current U.S. law, they don't.)
HBKXNCUO 7y ago
Do any of those places host a substantial portion of the public political debate? If any of those places banned people, would that significantly reduce the ability of those people to meaningfully participated in the public political debate?
- dageshi 7y ago
  Probably not, but then I don't think it's a like to like comparison, youtube is more of a broadcast system than anything, it's closer to TV or Newspapers were pre youtube and nobody has the automatic right to TV airtime or to be printed in a newspaper.

CodiePetersen 7y ago

Although any hateful speech is terrible of course, I think censoring like this is a bad idea. Like other conversations about freedom of speech on HN it will eventually lead to talking about banning non hateful but extreme ideas like flat earth and anti vax. While ridiculous as they are, I think it would be equally ridiculous to ban them. What's the line you draw when you decide what gets to be promoted. Maybe certain religious ideas or ideas criticising religions? I do disagree with your private business comment though. It is a private business and they can do what they want to an extent. You don't tell a news paper who they have to let write articles. But I think the problem is that youtube is so large and the service so imporant that it might as well be a government deciding rights. It's not just youtube there are a lot of tech giants that powerful. I think when it's obvious they are that powerful and important it's time to break them up. I mean hell the bread company my step dad works at even had to go through a process to see if they would be too big with a recent purchase. But yet tech companies have been getting away with this sort of unchecked growth. They are global powers with dwindling competition. Break them up. Reintroduce competition.

convivialdingo 7y ago
Agreed. The only comment I would add is that, unlike newspapers, these companies receive a broad immunity through the laws so that they can operate without fear of legal retribution. Even though they operate as private companies, I would argue that they still have a mandate to the public good as part of their operations.
Frondo 7y ago
I'm also okay banning anti-vax ideas, in defense of the community in general, and in defense in specific of those vulnerable few who can't be immunized and rely on herd immunity. Foregoing vaccination imposes an as-yet-unaccounted externality on the community; you put everyone at risk by not vaccinating yourself or your kids, and there's no way for the vulnerable (those relying on herd immunity) to know who around them will put them at risk. It goes way beyond an individual choice, to vaccinate or not. That decision has impacts far beyond the individual's life.
- 7y ago

anbop 7y ago

I agree with your comment but find it rambling, so I’ll concur with this: If free speech is a right worth protecting from the government, it’s worth protecting against equally powerful corporations.

nybble41 7y ago
> If free speech is a right worth protecting from the government, it’s worth protecting against equally powerful corporations. The right of free speech is that you can say what you want without violent repercussions, such as fines, prison time, or capital punishment. Corporations and individuals already aren't allowed to do any of that, so no additional protection is needed. Governments are singled out specifically because they do not follow the same rules as everyone else—asserting that violence is a "legitimate" means of achieving arbitrary goals.
- iamnothere 7y ago
  > The right of free speech is that you can say what you want without violent repercussions, such as fines, prison time, or capital punishment. This is merely one view of free speech; many people actively disagree with this view. You can't take a contested human-defined concept like freedom of speech and say "this only means X, case closed." I mean, you can, but nobody has to agree with you.
  - esailija 7y ago
    The view that free speech should protect you even from the most trivial consequences like being banned from a private platform is completely unreasonable and ridiculous. Doesn't matter that there are people that hold that opinion, that's a weak argument for it.
    - belorn 7y ago
      A lot of people combine free speech with anti-discrimination. Speech get attached to identity and from there a ban becomes discrimination. Three people walk into a Hotel. A priest, a advocate for the left, and a advocate for the right. Each three talks about the groups they define as "us", and how bad those "others" are. Can the hotel owner deny hosting and ban one of them based on the identity and vies of the person?

geofft 7y ago

> We wouldn't blindly allow company-owned cities or states to pass laws, especially vague or undefined ones, that potentially violate our rights, so why do we allow "states" in cyberspace to be run in such a way? Actual states have a monopoly on violence, and can deprive me of life, liberty, and property. So I want them to have as few excuses to do that as possible. These "states" in cyberspace can do none of that, so it's significantly less of a problem if they don't embrace freedom of speech as an ideal. (I guess it depends somewhat on whether you see free speech as an inherent virtue or as a safety valve against government oppression. I've been leaning towards the latter personally.)

qrbLPHiKpiux 7y ago

I wish all internet comment sections be removed. If you have something to say, promote your own website. Yelp is the worst.

saynay 7y ago

I'm wondering why YouTube doesn't have something like Reddit's "quarantine" where certain videos and/or channels are blocked from the recommendation algorithms without being outright banned, but still available for those who specifically search for them.

scottlocklin 7y ago
They do. Now they're taking the additional step of just deleting them. FWIIW this censorious crap cost them $70b in market cap last quarter. Looking forward to next quarter.
r3bl 7y ago
Here, try this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8beSkkKJ_0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8beSkkKJ_0 No comments, likes, dislikes, and no recommendations on the sidebar. It can still be viewed if you accept the risk, and can be found using the search bar or by scrolling through the channel.
- tomp 7y ago
  Funny enough, it's available in the US, but not in many EU countries (I tried Italy, Spain and Belgium).
  - Whatarethese 7y ago
    Its gone now.

cynoclast 7y ago

>Ban people promoting violence? There's a constitutional amendment between the first and the third that is specifically for turning a misbehaving government off and back on, specifically using violence, whether that government likes it or not, because violence is the only thing that tyrants bend the knee for. And free speech is more important than your and my feelings combined, and one person's hate speech is another's common sense, and vice versa. Who gets to decide?

woliveirajr 7y ago

Funny how last XKCD refers to NPR and comment sections: https://xkcd.com/2159/ https://xkcd.com/2159/

drewcoo 7y ago

What strange irony that you post about it on HN, effectively a detached comment section for a news site. Was that intended? Regardless, I think you're making the tacit assertion that comments for the news belong somewhere. How? How should its censorship work? Would that take care of the problem?

munk-a 7y ago
There definitely is an effect to white-labeling and brand confidence. When comments are hosted by an organization - regardless of the specific legal implications and understandings - people assume the brand has some ownership of the contents of those comments... No matter how big of a font is used to say "The opinions expressed below belong solely to their owners and do not reflect the views of <BRAND>."

empath75 7y ago

Generally, true statements are not profound or original, but sometimes still need to be repeated when people assert the opposite. “The world is round” is neither an original or profound statement and yet people still need to say it periodically.

xfitm3 7y ago

Am I the only one who really enjoys shitty YouTube comments?

siruncledrew 7y ago

1. Comments sections on prominent, generalized websites (non-niche sites) are oftentimes not even worth reading. Buried beneath idiotic nonsense, spam/scams, edgelords, trolls, bots, and narcissists are the actual few insightful comments that are refreshing bits of value. It's like panning for gold in a river. -- 2. There's not going to be a fair judge of what counts as "censorable content" when two opposite sites of the debate are each arguing in favor of their side. It's like why referees exist in sports. Of course Team A will say "No way! That wasn't a foul, I didn't touch them!", while Team B says "It was definitely a foul, I got hit!". To anyone who's heard "boos or cheers" from the crowd at a sports game, it's not a shocker the response centers around which calls benefits their team. -- 3. With regards to the "freedom of speech" rights and personal liberties - how much of a shit does a monopoly-level, multi-national corporation give about strictly adhering to government-defined "rights"? What is the business cost of vehemently adhering to potentially-gray-area covenants vs. saying "Yeahh.. fuck that shit it's too much effort". Finagling laws to suit business needs is what huge companies pay teams of people to do already. -- 4. YouTube is like a factory farm. The more users are bunched into YouTube, the more money Google makes from advertising. It's all a numbers game. Google has no incentive to change the setup of the farm, so to speak, when what they have has been paying off to keep the service free and hold market share. Unless someone has a particularly large audience, the main solution to complaints from random, non-paying users is: "Deal with it". -- 5. Ban specific items that are violent, devious, or dangerous? Sure. Banning "DIY drinking bleach cures autism" is not the same as banning something more nuanced like "trailer trash ride dirt bikes on the interstate" on the grounds a specific subgroup has a problem. As customer service will show you, people will always find something to complain about. If Google came out with, "We will ban whatever we feel like based on what disagrees with our superior, self-selected ideology", that would be a very different story. That's not much better than a dictatorship banning anything that disagrees with the State.