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Karl Bode over at Techdirt brings us news that NPR will no longer be allowing comments on its website in order to promote relationships and conversation:
For several years now we've documented the rise in websites that shutter their comment sections, effectively muzzling their own on-site communities. Usually this is because websites are too lazy and cheap to moderate or cultivate real conversation, or they're not particularly keen on having readers point out their inevitable errors in such a conspicuous location. But you can't just come out and admit this -- so what we get is all manner of disingenuous prattle from website editors about how the comments section is being closed because they just really value conversation, or are simply trying to build better relationships.
NPR appears to be the latest in this trend du jour, with Managing Editor of digital news Scott Montgomery penning a new missive over at the website saying the comments are closing as of August 23:
"After much experimentation and discussion, we've concluded that the comment sections on NPR.org stories are not providing a useful experience for the vast majority of our users. In order to prioritize and strengthen other ways of building community and engagement with our audience, we will discontinue story-page comments on NPR.org on August 23."
Again, nothing says we "love and are engaged with" our community quite like preventing them from being able to speak to you on site (this muzzle represents my love for you, darling). The logic is, as Montgomery proceeds to proclaim, that social media is just so wonderful, on-site dialogue is no longer important:
"Social media is now one of our most powerful sources for audience interaction. Our desks and programs run more than 30 Facebook pages and more than 50 Twitter accounts. We maintain vibrant presences on Snapchat, Instagram and Tumblr. Our main Facebook page reaches more than 5 million people and recently has been the springboard for hundreds of hours of live video interaction and audience-first projects such as our 18,000-member "Your Money and Your Life" group."
And while those are all excellent additional avenues of interaction and traffic generation, it's still not quite the same as building brand loyalty through cultivating community and conversation on site. By outsourcing all conversation to Facebook, you're not really engaging in your readers, you're herding them to a homogonized[sic], noisy pasture where they're no longer your problem. In short, we want you to comment -- we just want you to comment privately or someplace else so our errors aren't quite so painfully highlighted and we no longer have to try to engage you publicly. All for the sake of building deeper relationships, of course.
Say it with me now: control the narrative at all costs.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 19 2016, @12:47AM
I dunno about y'all, but if a site requires javascript to read comments, much less post them, I never even see them. I'm not putting an exception in NoScript just for that. I'm not a big fan of centralized commenting systems like disqus either, but least they have the option to display comments without javascript if the site-owner sets it up correctly (they don't need a cross-site reference back to disqus either). Ars Technica recently redesigned their site and now you can't even view the comments without javascript. So, for me personally, most of the web has not had comments for a very long time anyway.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 19 2016, @01:37AM
God help you if you ever write any JavaScript yourself, for you will be condemned by your peers who use NoScript and who will not make an exception for you.
(Score: 2) by art guerrilla on Friday August 19 2016, @01:57AM
yep, only a couple sites i turn no-script off for, and most are not news or op/ed sites...
enjoy comments for various reasons, but if you are going to make me jump through unnecessary hoops, well, i guess you lose my clicky-clicks...
there is one site that when i feel moved to fling my faeces into the mix, i will re-sign in with a vanilla explorer i use for such tasks, make my comment and switch back to my real browser...
thought disqus was a great idea and signed up, hoping it might prove more ubiquitous than it had, but it seems to be being used less and less on the sites i frequent...
shame, really like it, works pretty good, have a central source of -theoretically- ALL your online comments, etc...
probably would have actually paid some amount of money for a service like that which was viable...
oh well...
(Score: 3, Insightful) by hemocyanin on Friday August 19 2016, @02:27AM
I gave up on the javascript fight. It's lost.
My take is that I won't go to news sites that don't allow commenting. What better way is there for the elites to control public opinion than to control what is considered news, how it is reported, and to prohibit commentary and dissent?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 19 2016, @03:44AM
You must care about way too many corporate websites because I get around just fine without javascript.
And I don't fight javascript just to be a rebel, I do it to maintain the security of my browser.
As for comments on corporate websites - you are a fool if you don't think they are meticulously censored in order to control commentary and dissent. At least NPR isn't presenting themselves as supporting commentary and dissent and then doing the opposite behind the scenes.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 19 2016, @08:34PM
Amen.
Once in a blue moon, I find something that is behind script(s) and still piques my curiosity.
I will feed the URL into archive.is[1] and let them try to run the scripts for me.
If that doesn't do the trick, my curiosity dissipates rapidly.
[1] If you've been having trouble opening the landing page at archive.is, try archive.li.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Informative) by Snotnose on Friday August 19 2016, @04:15AM
What anonymous coward said. I use the web just fine without javascript after whitelisting a handful of sites I trust. Javascript is disabled, Flash is blocked, Java isn't even installed. Not because I'm a WWW hermit, but because of security.
And hey guess what? I've gotten exactly 1 virus (well, that I know of). That was years ago on WinXP, it rearranged the icons on my screen randomly.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 19 2016, @03:08PM
I run a lot of pages through archive.is just to see them, because I block all javascript and most bullshit on the web via noscript, adblock plus, firefox's about:config, hosts file, etc.
(Score: 1) by godshatter on Friday August 19 2016, @06:01PM
Even should you decide you want to view the comments, the next hurdle is determining which of the 15+ blocked javascript domains you need to enable temporarily, after you already temporarily enabled a few just to see the damn article itself. News sites are especially bad at this to the point where I don't even try any more. I engage in fisticuffs and spew my vitriolic comments on G+ news articles solely, now.