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We're Getting Rid of Comments on VICE.com (vice.com)
almost 7 years ago from Sam Solomon, Staff Product Designer at Salesloft
36 comments
Duke Cavinski, almost 7 years ago (edited almost 7 years ago )
I can't believe this is controversial on DN. They decided that comments don't provide value to their product, and on the contrary, were actually damaging and not worth the support to manage appropriately. Why does a news site have to require comments, or any site for that matter?
wojtek w., almost 7 years ago
Good point. Let's turn off comments on DN as well.
Jason Miller, almost 7 years ago
"While we always welcomed your thoughts on how we are actually a right-wing mouthpiece for the CIA, or how much better we were before we sold our dickless souls to the gods of capitalism, or just how shitty we are in general, we had to ban countless commenters over the years for threatening our writers and subjects, doxxing private citizens, and engaging in hate speech against pretty much every group imaginable."
Before we turn the comments on DN into the same kind of cesspool they were on Vice, consider how this is an opportunity to talk about the issues at hand rather than shouting each other down in the most colourful ways we can come up with.
Maurice Cherry, almost 7 years ago
Before we turn the comments on DN into the same kind of cesspool they were on Vice, consider how this is an opportunity to talk about the issues at hand rather than shouting each other down in the most colourful ways we can come up with.
Depending on the topic, the comments here get pretty caustic.
Jansen Tolle, almost 7 years ago Right-wing mouthpiece for the CIA?
Aubrey Johnson, almost 7 years ago
Wow. Turned their whole site into a safe space.
Jansen Tolle, almost 7 years ago From edgy to safe space. Sad.
If you ran a shop, you wouldn't allow customers to abuse each other in the store either. Nobody wants their place of business to be somewhere that people fear to visit.
Unless your store sold stuff that got everyone polarized so extremely that they acted like that.
One thing I like about Huffpo is how entertaining the comment section is. It's absolutely bonkers. People have such thin skins. There's just assholes out there, move on and live on. If you're scared of the comment section of a website, seems like the issue isn't the comment section.
Jansen Tolle, almost 7 years ago Huffpo is awful, so this comparison just makes Vice look even worse.
Claire Lines, almost 7 years ago (edited almost 7 years ago ) Idk, comment sections can sometimes lead to amazing, productive, and open conversations. But more often than not, its people yelling at each other about their points of view.
The whole "safe space" argument is kind of dismissive to me. People are emotional and most are bad at actual debate.
Mike Wilson, almost 7 years ago (edited almost 7 years ago ) I just got a mental image of a millennial living somewhere in Bushwick (obviously)....hiding behind a couch in a dark room....while the light from their monitor cuts through the darkness...the Vice comment section is up....BOO!
Hilarious. Nothing is more scary than words on the internet. It's not like you can just choose not to read them or not click.
I'm sure they probably realized their readership doesn't want to be confronted with ideas outside the bubble they live in (ie. the "people on facebook" phenomenon), and moderating out thoughts that don't agree with your editorial slant is super expensive in terms of labor cost.
This is hilarious to me as well.
I definitely understand the legitimate complaint of innocent people getting doxxed and reporters receiving death threats. These are unacceptable.
"engaging in hate speech against pretty much every group imaginable" - doesn't this just negate the concept? Seems like everyone pisses everyone else off or something they do/say/wear/think/love etc makes people mad. Again, assholes everywhere. Discourse is healthy.
Philip Weber, almost 7 years ago
Discourse is healthy
That is like saying food is healthy. There are many kinds of food and many kinds of discourse.
Text based online discourse invariable leads to treating each other poorly. When you don't see someone's reaction while talking to them, you are capable of saying things you would never to say to someone's face.
For example, based on your comments on this thread, I'm angry at you. I think you are an asshole. It's easy for me to say that because you aren't a human to me. You're words on a screen. I'm 95% sure that if we met in person, we'd have a lot in common and get a long quite well.
Art Vandelay, almost 7 years ago
The best part is that you're allowed to think @Aubrey Johnson is an asshole cause you can have an opinion!
Comment threads are the dirty butthole of the internet but to remove it completely means the shit is gonna go somewhere else, not that its gone.
VICE being as edgy as it is just became more concerned with legalities of their own comment section than the stuff they report on.
Big fucking losers if you ask me. Then again, whoever said VICE was news and not entertainment is a straight up idiot, IMO.
FYI - I'd probably be considered an asshole too and that's just fine with me.
Hint: He's an asshole in real life too ;)
Text based online discourse invariable leads to treating each other poorly.
Seems like almost every piece of communication software we use today is in disagreement with that idea though (slack, messenger, iMessage, hangout, etc etc). People are obviously capable of communicating online via text just fine.
I think the issue you are inadvertently pointing to though is maturity.
Maybe I'm weird here but I don't think about other people online as "not-human" (including you Philip - I imagine you are a person, living your life, are real/have feelings, etc). I don't think meeting in person is a requirement to get along in a digital age. In fact, I think it's a requirement to learn TO get along and ignore those who don't play by the same societal rules we apply to real life. In VICE's case here, this would be like sewing everyone's mouthes shut vs just ignoring people or leaving the scene or whatever.
Of the people that you communicate with on Slack, messenger, iMessage, and Hangouts, how many have you not met in person? I would guess very few. Even if you talk to coworkers on Slack that you have never met in person, you have an ongoing relationship with them.
Comment threads are public discourse, mostly between strangers. You may think that you view everyone you talk to online as human, but you don't. No one does. You can't read a thread with tens or hundreds of participants and consider the nature of their existence.
My opinion (for now) is that there are problematic issues with comments. The discussion we are having right now, though both of us have made it slightly uncivil at times, is interesting to me, and I've learned something from it, so, hey, I guess I'm not against them. However, more often than not, I regret participation.
Dan G, almost 7 years ago
You should probably read this — https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/nov/28/snowflake-insult-disdain-young-people
Dismissing an entire generation of people (and people in general) is pretty grim, dude.
Jim Silverman, almost 7 years ago
Wow. Turned their whole site into a safe space.
what? no, they simply got tired of moderating the cesspool that is their comment section. this is certainly understandable and made very clear in the article.
vice isn't a place, it's a magazine. they're under no obligation to host discourse of any kind. feel free to flame them on the appropriate channels.
Seems like so many other online content distribution entities didn't have this problem though. I think that's the issue people take here.
New York Times, WaPo, CNN, Wall St Journal, Fox, MSNBC, Mail Online, The Guardian, USA Today, BBC News, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Tumblr - all seem to continue reporting news and delivering content WITH comments. Hell "YouTube comment section" is even a meme in and of itself.
New York Times, WaPo, CNN, Wall St Journal, Fox, MSNBC, Mail Online, The Guardian, USA Today, BBC News
these are huge media entities that dedicate a significant amount of resources to moderating comments. several simply outsource their comments to Facebook.
The Guardian actually wrote an essay on how shitty, complex, and futile comment moderation is. damned if you moderate, damned if you don't. eliminating comments entirely was likely the best product decision Vice could make in this situation.
YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Tumblr
these are not publications, they're entirely user-driven sites and not relevant to this discussion.
anthony thomas, almost 7 years ago
What a bunch of cowards. They can't handle public scrutiny so they decide to ban comments. Any business or person with integrity would address the criticism directly, not censor public opinion like a coward. Will never read a Vice article again.
Sacha Greif, almost 7 years ago
Can't tell if this is sarcasm or not…
Looks real based on past comments.
Ryan Glover, almost 7 years ago
Amazing.
Jansen Tolle, almost 7 years ago Vice has gone so far down hill. It is a worthless publication at this point. RIP.
What a bunch of cowards. They can't handle public scrutiny so they decide to ban comments. Any business or person with integrity would address the criticism directly, not censor public opinion like a coward. Will never read a Vice article again.
- they aren't "censoring public opinion"-- they simply aren't hosting it on their site.
- pretty sure you aren't a Vice reader in the first place.
To summarize this thread for everyone (TL;DR)
- Some people in this thread think it's dumb that VICE shut down their comments.
- Some people in this thread think its not dumb that VICE shut down their comments.
- People in this thread do not agree on whether or not it's dumb that VICE shut down their comments.
One person didn't know VICE was a thing until this thread.
Swap out "VICE shut down their comments" for the topic of any comment thread ever and you've summed up how they work.
Gold star.
Joseph Decker, almost 7 years ago (edited almost 7 years ago ) To take an example of a product that keeps on fighting this battle, twitch.tv — if there is any place on the web that has multi racist/crazy shouting every millisecond, it would be the live stream of Sodapoppin on twitch.tv.
Not going in too many details regarding the channels, they do however continue their fight with real time filtering of the chats.. something similar might work just as well for Comments. They do however need to keep in mind that the replies should be filtered out as well, for missing the original context.
The can make this algorithm "edgy", as seeing a comment on this thread, by letting the algorithm reply to the comment in a edgy but truthful matter. I believe this is an interesting opportunity, rather than filtering out/removing the content, a algorithm based on logical thinking would reply to the matter and leaving everyone out.
Making it even more edgy, instantly spreading the comment written over the internet with the IP address and a nice facebook profile photo... lovely.
What are you thoughts?
ps, might be off topic *ps, never heard of Vice before this thread
You're better off not hearing of VICE, IMO. It's cute "edgy news" for brooklynite, 20somethings, who don't believe in religion.
It's not news, its opinion and more so entertainment. If they were news, they'd report both sides of every topic they cover.
Do yourself a favor and watch Bob's Burgers over VICE any day (they do have a TV channel too)
What's pretty funny is Vice syndicates these articles to Facebook, giving them a wider audience (1.18B DAUs) to engage in all of these commenting issues they're whining about.
Oz Chen, almost 7 years ago
They acknowledge this in the article:
"We don't have the time or desire to continue monitoring that crap moving forward. Besides, there are plenty of other ways for you to publicly discuss our work and the personal worth of our staff. We'll still be reading your thoughts on Twitter and Facebook, and we legitimately do enjoy getting IRL mail (no bombs) sent to our offices in Brooklyn."
yep. i'm willing to bet those rallying against Vice's removal of comments are simply taking the opportunity to attack a liberal-leaning publication without considering the context or rational thought.
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