Here's why digital publications are shutting down comments section

IllustrationRavi JadhavSome time in April last year independent news website Scrollin made an announcement that left many readers perplexedFor a digital publication that had consciously decided to not have a facility for readers comments mdash the very core of online audience interaction mdash it seemed rather baffling why theyd go ahead and appoint a readers editor It took a long piece by former Economic and Political Weekly editor C Rammanohar Reddy the man appointed to this new position to set the record straight Reddy pointed out why the comments facility had long ceased to be a platform where civil and thoughtful discussions took placeLast week when AlJazeeracom announced that it was also disabling its comments section the growing discomfort that online platforms were feeling with user engagement became more palpable The facility AlJazeeracom argued was being hijacked by users hiding behind pseudonyms spewing vitriol bigotry racism and sectarianismRitu KapurAlJazeera is not alone Reuterscom TheWeekcom NewsMic NPRorg among others have long employed similar arguments to shut down their comments system Closer home this template is slowly winning favour among several editors Nikhil Pahwa of MediaNama minced no words when telling this writer that he too has plans to quit this circus of hapless commentating But how far is such censoring of the readers voice justifiedNo light only heatIn my view journalism is no longer about people in newsrooms who are repositories of information and fact or about oneway communication says Ritu Kapur cofounder and CEO Quintillion Media that runs news site The Quint The reader is no longer a passive consumer He or she interacts very very deeply with content I dont agree with not having a comments sectionNaresh Fernandes editor of Scrollin however disagrees Comments are expected to cast light or offer a new perspective on the issue that is being discussed but most commentators dont do that he says justifying why Scrollin doesnt have a comments section Yes we wanted feedback but from what we had noticed comments were clearly not generating any light but only heat Often it was quite destructive he addsNikhil Pahwa and Saisuresh SivaswamyAshok Hegde digital media consultant who has previously been involved with moderating comments for a leading web portal admits that a large percentage of comments any site receives is just noise mdash chitchat trolling or abusePahwa says that the first major attack on comments came with spam links While antispam filters helped tackle this a more worrying trend emerged after 2011 where on his site the volume of abusive comments saw a dramatic riseWe found that good people had stopped commenting and the comments page had been taken over by vile abusive people he says explaining that the possible reason for why quality commentating had stopped was because of peoples preference to use social media as a tool to exchange news Instead of people commenting on your site they were now exchanging views on their timeline with their own people he saysSocial media to the rescueMost news sites feel that since traffic is anyway moving to social media its a better platform for readers to engage with articles they publish But the big downside is that you are ceding control of your users and content generated by them to the social media platform Facebook may drive more traffic to your website but serious publishers would want to retain control of the data said HegdeThe decision for the switch is also more to do with anticipating and preventing expensive legal trouble over a stray comment Given the boundaryless nature of the Internet an FIR can be lodged anywhere not for what a journalist has said but what some idle chap sitting on a charpoy in Manamadurai has posted in the comments section says Saisuresh Sivaswamy editor rediffcom which was one of the earliest sites to enable instant comments A discourse on social media on the other hand puts the legal liability of the abuse on the said platform and not on the publisherModeration is goodThe procomments group considers moderation as a practical solution to the problem But most news sites I know are tight on budgets Moderating comments needs a team dedicated to keeping the conversation clean says Hegde adding that popular sites would need at least three to four members working in shiftsScrollin relies on its Letters to the Editor published thrice a week to attract reader participation Most people who write are thoughtful and have something substantial to say Its very funny how simply the act of clicking on a Letters to the Editor button seems to make people think in a different way says FernandesBut even here Sivaswamy argues that its an editorial decision as to which letter runs and which doesnt The online medium takes this editorial intervention away and along with it some say the judgement call as well he thinksRediffcom has introduced a system of twofactor authentication where a user has to validate his mobile number to be able to post on their message boards You wont believe how much this has helped in cleaning out our comments section says SivaswamyIrrespective of better alternatives coming by the truth as of today is that the comments box is fast vanishing In an era of freethinking and Internet denying someone the opportunity to comment on ones site could seem like a morally wrong thing to do but legally its still a grey area says Mihir Desai senior advocate Bombay high courtIf it is trollbehaviour that has triggered the change then the effects could be shortterm if anything As Sivaswamy suggests the troll is always one step ahead of the game You devise a way he sidesteps it you prevent that he finds another exit route