“Mainstream news and liberal websites cut off comments several years ago”
Yahoo cut comments off a few months before the election. Sad that American “Thinker” is a follower now.
The Atlantic and NPR used to have lively comment sections. Both were shut down with some excuses that always sounded, to me at least, like evasions. The fact is that on both sites the liberals were being dominated by much better informed conservatives on most politically-oriented topics. Both sites attracted high quality participants and the tone was overwhelmingly civil. There was very little trolling; conservatives seemed to understand that they were playing in the other side's sandbox and mostly behaved themselves. When abusive and vulgar comments occasionally did emerge, however, they were overwhelmingly from the left, which will not surprise anyone here. My suspicion is that management at both organizations simply became embarrassed at having their staff writers exposed on a regular basis.