NPR Discontinues Comments

[LDAHL]

http://www.npr.org/sections/ombudsman/2016/08/17/489516952/npr-website-to-get-rid-of-comments

I see that NPR is no longer providing comments sections. Their reasons seem to include:

People are often mean to each other.

The comments are unrepresentative of the listeners. The proportion of comments from males is too high.

People can always go to social media.

Comments sections are too expensive and troublesome.

[jp1]

I don't blame them. although I have no idea about the gender statistics the rest seems pretty accurate, and could be said of the comments sections of countless sites. Especially if an article gets posted on a discussion site for people who typically have opinions disagreeing with the article because then a bunch of people go to the original article to express their disagreement. Often in an unfriendly way that isn't intended to seek consensus or agreement in any way, but rather, to bludgeon the "other side" as meanly and harshly as their writing skills enable them to.

[Alan]

Allowing the public to enjoy input to National Public Radio commentaries is so passe.

[LDAHL]

Allowing the public to enjoy input to National Public Radio commentaries is so passe.

Their ombudsman addresses that sentiment by sophistically claiming NPR's federal funding is "indirect" in that member stations receive taxpayer funding and then pay membership fees to NPR. It's a sort of money laundering, I suppose.

I'm not entirely sure how I feel about comments sections. Leaving them wide open does to some degree create a safe space for trolls. On the other hand, fairly heavily moderated sites like the New York Times seem to degrade into echo chambers. Forced to choose, I suppose I'd rather deal with the occasional obnoxious twit rather than submit to the censorship of some high-minded assistant editor or algorithm.

[jp1]

It's not as though there's no longer any way to directly interact. Personally I'm fine with the other opportunities to interact with NPR or with other readers via social media. Their facebook page appears to have a robust number of people commenting on it. Every story posted in the last few hours has over 100 comments already most of which appear to be fairly civil, perhaps because people use their real names there. And whether npr staff and management will choose to engage or not is probably no different than when the comments were hosted on their site directly.

I do wish, though, that every story got posted to it to provide the opportunity to comment.

[freshstart]

thx, jp1, it didn't occur to me to look at their FB page

[iris lilies]

It's not as though there's no longer any way to directly interact. Personally I'm fine with the other opportunities to interact with NPR or with other readers via social media. Their facebook page appears to have a robust number of people commenting on it. Every story posted in the last few hours has over 100 comments already most of which appear to be fairly civil, perhaps because people use their real names there. And whether npr staff and management will choose to engage or not is probably no different than when the comments were hosted on their site directly.

I do wish, though, that every story got posted to it to provide the opportunity to comment.

But will I have a safe space on FB with only a fair sprinkling of men commenting? If I have to read a lot of comments by men I might shrivel up and die. All of that mansplaining, it poisons the atmosphere, it create negative energy.

/sarcasm

[Tybee]

One thing you won't have on FB is a safe space, if you count being monetized and spied on as triggers.

[jp1]

Everyone monetizes all the info they can. That's just part of being online unless you use TOR for all your browsing and never give out any info to anyone or purchase anything from anyone, etc. Like every other web site Disqus, NPR's former comment platform, monetizes it's users also. It's just not as blatant or obvious as facebook. Anyone who signs up with them has agreed to this in their TOS:

Privacy

We care about the privacy of our Users. You understand that by using the Services you consent to the collection, use and disclosure of your personally identifiable information and aggregate data as set forth in our Privacy Policy //docs.disqus.com/help/30/, and to have your personally identifiable information collected, used, transferred to and processed in the United States

[Tybee]

That's interesting. I never read the NPR TOS. Do you think they were selling the info, or just using it to solicit contributions?

[jp1]

That's actually not NPR's TOS. That's Disqus's. NPR outsourced their comments platform to Disqus, so to post comments on NPR's site you had to sign up for an account with Disqus.

[ApatheticNoMore]

The thing is with all this monetizing of info have you ever had anyone try to sell you anything based on it? Neither have I, other than Amazon recommendations. But presumably it is all so they can sell me something in 20 years when the information is finally "ripe" or something I guess.

[jp1]

I see stuff i've looked at on amazon advertised on pretty much every other web site that has ads.

[JaneV2.0]

They've obviously pegged me wrong. I see Facebook ads for stuff I'm diametrically opposed to. And I can't get rid of them. Color me apoplectic.

[ToomuchStuff]

Too bad this didn't happen around April 1st. The mod's could have closed the comments to this thread.:~)