Whoah, what's with the hostility here? Not everything is a big corporate media conspiracy for control of information, power, and taking over the world. Forget

Whoah, what's with the hostility here? Not everything is a big corporate media conspiracy for control of information, power, and taking over the world. Forget about what you think of the Times or any other major media outlet for a moment and just focus on the point of the article and you'll see the author makes some great points. Supposing for a moment that the NYT and other outlets are trustworthy, doing a good journalistic job, etc. This research shows that people who write ignorant comments, especially if they're written in a tone not much different than your own right now to be honest, can distort what others think of the information presented. This is not a good thing. The people who comment based on emotion rather than reason are able to sway people into not only believing something potentially wrong but such comments also take otherwise thoughtful people and get them acting and thinking based on emotion rather than reason. If you yourself were to make some very good point about topic X that was well-researched and could potentially help to inform and make many peoples' lives better but then some asshole contrarian comes along and makes some emotional appeal that sways people in the opposite direction. How incredibly frustrated would you feel knowing that a potentially enlightening conversation could have ensued but now it's just a rat's nest of ignorance like YouTube? I don't know how you turned this into a statement against media outlets but this is actually something that applies broadly and is not just harmful for the Times or the other "evil" media outlets.