Will the Federalist bring back its comments section with some sort of automated safeguard on abusive language or even active editing?
A war on comment sections opens another Pandora's box. I used to enjoy the comments sections at The Atlantic and NPR. They were quite lively. IMHO, conservatives rather convincingly dominated the discussions on many contentious topics. It was not uncommon for Atlantic and NPR reporting and opinion pieces to be ripped to sheds, in generally civil and constructive responses (conservatives on those sites minded their manners), by commentators who clearly knew vastly more about the subject at hand than the authors. It must have been embarrassing in staff meetings to have the readers expose the ignorance and blindspots of the staff on such a regular basis. The rebuttals also undermined the propaganda value of the pieces for the publications' baseline liberal readership; spineless party lines seeking validation of preexisting prejudices will always be disturbed by independent and non-conforming voices, which raise the need for more information and serious thought. I continue to believe that's why The Atlantic and NPR shut them down, though they gave other excuses. Comments sections are often the best part of publications, just as op ed sections, in the olden days, were often the best part of newspapers. I can understand why the left is uncomfortable with them.
The Atlantic and NPR dropped their comments sections and pushed responses to Twitter and Facebook. Of course, we now know the political disciplines in play there.
The issue now arising is whether the pressure on The Federalist and ZeroHedge is a one-off or an opening salvo in a new campaign to shut down conservative access to comments sections more broadly, which are highly visible public platforms. I'd bet the latter. The leftist goal is to control and censor all online communication; everything outside the party line becomes hatespeech. But here's the rub: if Google insists that conservative publications have editorial responsibility for all comments in the comment section, isn't that game, set and match for the argument about Facebook, Twitter and other left-dominated platforms being publishers rather than neutral platforms?
I hope it will, I always read the readers comments and sometimes reply.