I was referring to the cost of pruning free comments. If people had to pay, comments sections would be almost completely empty. Any fee attached to commenting

I was referring to the cost of pruning free comments. If people had to pay, comments sections would be almost completely empty. Any fee attached to commenting is little different from just banning comments. Few will pay to put their $0.02 on a story they disagree with even fewer will pay if they agree with it. They'll go bitch about it on FB, then bitch about the commenting system too. As you say, fighting comment trolling and spam is expensive, news media isn't making money hand over fist. I've rarely seen comments add value to a site so why pay to keep them?