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Yahoo! News

Yahoo Disables All Article Comments (distractify.com) 231

Yahoo has replaced the comments section under its articles with a survey. Now, there's a message that reads: "Our goal is to create a safe and engaging place for users to connect over interests and passions. In order to improve our community experience, we are temporarily suspending article commenting. In the meantime, we welcome your feedback to help us enhance the experience."

Many readers who frequently comment on Yahoo News articles are quite upset. Some feel as though they're being censored and that Yahoo has made a huge mistake. "Yahoo News nuked all of their comment sections! Guess they were tired of people pushing back against their narratives," one person wrote. "Yahoo just block[ed] their comment section as well. When you read thru them it was 90% conservative veiws [sic]. Guess they can't allow that type of 'free speech,'" said another. Others were thrilled to see Yahoo finally do away with a comment section that often contained messages of hate and vitriol. "Kudos to Yahoo for finally doing something about the comment threads on their articles," one person wrote. "I support the removal of comments. Share articles as is and people can share/comment on their preferred platform," another said.

Do you agree with Yahoo's decision to temporarily disable comments?
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Yahoo Disables All Article Comments

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  • by tsuliga ( 553869 ) on Friday July 24, 2020 @04:24PM (#60327739)

    Comments are an alternative perspective on the mind or mood of the populace. Removing comments mean we only get to see the view of Yahoo and not the population in general. i like the comments even if they were 100% opposite of the article. It was fun reading them.

    • by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Friday July 24, 2020 @04:37PM (#60327785)

      It's unlikely comments are the viewpoint of "the population in general" - it's just the viewpoint of the small number of people motivated enough to comment.

      Heck, look at Slashdot. This site has more than 6 million members... and I bet 98% of the comments are made by fewer than 1000 people (BTW has anyone ever done a statistical analysis?).

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by tinkerton ( 199273 )

      Obviously user comments are fake news and we're better off without them.

      • I fully agree with you, specially about self-referential comments.
      • Objectively, the vast majority of Yahoo article comments are trolls. One way to tell: compare the top level comments ordered by upvotes to the replies not ordered by upvotes. That's how yahoo comments work, and it's an open door for abuse. The replies tend to be ludicrous random trolls while the top level comments tend to be fairly good, whether supporting or opposing the article. What does that tell you? The site is awash in trolls. The trolls are encouraged because their replies can't be buried by downvot

        • by Moblaster ( 521614 ) on Friday July 24, 2020 @09:16PM (#60328609)

          The Yahoo boards are used as direct state propaganda by Russia. That is -- after any article with any content that's even remotely political, the comments are always either 100% conservative, or 100% liberal. There is literally never any gray. It's a state propaganda ploy to polarize opinion and disrupt the United States. On the other hand when you have articles that are non-political in nature, you will see a great variety of opinion. Unfortunately Russia has been using the Yahoo comment boards as an attack vector.

          • You don't need russia for that. Just traffic sources do that on their own. A major liberal or conservative blog or news site posts a link to a story, and suddenly tens of thousands flock over to read it and comment.

    • by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday July 24, 2020 @04:42PM (#60327801)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Sumguy2436 ( 6186944 )
        If there's one thing journalists hate, it's being corrected. Thus comment sections had to go.
      • My favorite thing to comment on was the writer's lack of education in the use of the English language.

        I find those types of comments especially annoying. Typically, they're made by people who want to nitpick anything they can find and it doesn't contribute to any constructive discussion whatsoever.

        • by dcw3 ( 649211 )

          If you're triggered that easily, you should stay offline. Same goes for people writing those corrections.

    • by Kunedog ( 1033226 ) on Friday July 24, 2020 @04:46PM (#60327817)
      They probably want to run more ridiculous headlines/stories in the run up to the election (the kind which don't stand up to even the mildest scrutiny) and having those immediately contradicted right below the article would be a problem.

      Don't be surprised if they start posting "exactly backwards" narratives, like the Washington Post's suggestion that the (legal) gun sale spike(s) caused the higher crime this year:
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
      https://archive.is/K0Ots [archive.is]
      • by DogDude ( 805747 )
        The post article provided reference to multiple studies. Do you have anything to say that these studies are invalid or incorrect, or are you just suggesting that your opinion is factual because it's your opinion?
        • Were the gun sales happening in the same geographical areas as the increased crime?

          No?

          Then the studies are bunk. You can't blame gun owners in Texas for murders in Chicago. If you try, people will laugh at you.

          • by DogDude ( 805747 )
            hen the studies are bunk. You can't blame gun owners in Texas for murders in Chicago. If you try, people will laugh at you.

            I'm laughing at you right now because you are suggesting that there's no way for guns to cross state lines.
    • by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 24, 2020 @04:48PM (#60327833)

      They're also increasingly expensive to prevent from being subverted. Even when you outsource comments to the likes of Disqus it's a problem.

      The issue is that bots are heavily used to not just use comments to provide an alternative perspective, but to drown out anything but a singular alternative perspective often at odds with the story and to give no one else a say.

      If outsource comments systems like Disqus actually made it their mission to deal with that abuse there'd be a fairly reasonable way of handling it cheaply, but they don't. So unless you want to commit tons of resources ala Slashdot where the value is oriented more into the comments and not the summary/TFA rather than vice versa with most news sites then it's just not worth it.

      I've seen accounts on Disqus that have literally many tens of thousands of posts in defence of Russia for example that post to any news site that posts anything about Russia spreading pro-Russian messages. They post with such frequency and speed that I have a hard time believing they're genuine - I do not believe anyone can keep up that temp naturally day in day out to defend a country their profile claims they don't even live in when even Americans with all their patriotism can't keep up with that sheer number and output of posting as an individual. It's just statistically implausible that a country with Russia's population would have such a disproportionately high number of people so committed to defending their country on comments boards that they do it 24/7, posting hundreds of comments a day, all day, every day, when no other country has that type of prolific poster.

      You see it on the BBC News website comments section too; the proportion of pro-Hard Brexit posters on some articles has been as high as 20:1 in some I've analysed. Again, that seems statistically implausible when the ratio of people who want hard Brexit is about 1:3 and the ratio of Brexit supporters to non-Brexit supporters is roughly 1:1.

      So whilst I don't dispute what you say - I agree, the reason I like Slashdot is because they do put enough focus on comments because that's their "thing". But for a site where it's just a side show, and if the cost of allowing legitimate alternative perspectives is so high that the actual result is to end up with a singular inorganic, often state sponsored alternative perspective such that your comments section effectively becomes a propaganda amplifier for someone else, often spreading trivially disprovable falsehoods, then why even bother having it? It's adding negative value at that point to your legitimate readers who want facts and debate not just a tirade of state sponsored propaganda.

      • by Solandri ( 704621 ) on Friday July 24, 2020 @07:14PM (#60328315)
        Y'know, back in the day, when dinosaurs roamed the earth, we had these things called "newspapers". You'd read the articles in them, but you couldn't comment on them. Well, not directly. If a particular article riled you up enough, you could write a letter to the newspaper publisher. And if they thought you had a good point, they'd publish your letter in a future edition of the newspaper under a section titled "letters to the editor."

        I think a good discussion could be had regarding the merits and drawbacks of both approaches. But I suspect that's unlikely to happen in a self-moderated forum like slashdot, as whichever viewpoint which ends up in the minority will just mod down opposing viewpoints to hide them from view. It's like most people with mod points never bothered to read the moderation guidelines [slashdot.org], or they have and are deliberately ignoring them to try to advance their viewpoint.
        • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

          by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

          That was back when journalists came from overwhelmingly working class background and saw it as their holy duty to tear down pretty much any elite individual who started to think too highly of themselves.

          As opposed to today, where overwhelming majority of the profession are elites from academia background, who want to be part of elite. And who have no interest in pursuing truth, because truth doesn't get the likes and share on twitter as hyperbolic nonsense about how Trump is running death camps on southern

      • Because of the number of dumb/racist posts.
        • by dcw3 ( 649211 )

          Seriously? If you don't like the comments, don't read them. You could just as easily have not clicked the Comments link, and gone on to the next article.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by DesScorp ( 410532 )

      Removing comments mean we only get to see the view of Yahoo and not the population in general.

      This is more of the Millenial/Zoomer "Safety over Free Speech" crap.

      ""Our goal is to create a safe and engaging place for users to connect over interests and passions.

      I'm sick of this cowardly nonsense. I'm sick of these kids that are so terrified of other people's opinions, that they demand "safe spaces". And corporations and governments are starting to coddle these little monsters.

      • by Dixie_Flatline ( 5077 ) <vincent@jan@goh.gmail@com> on Friday July 24, 2020 @07:23PM (#60328329) Homepage

        Oh whatever. Do you remember newspapers having comment sections? They had letters to the editor, and only a few of those would get in because there wasn't enough space to print every stupid conspiracy theory wackjob letter in the world. But by and large, if you wanted to discuss the news of the day, you leaned over your fence and talked to your neighbour about it. Or your family.

        That was back in the boomer/Gen-X times. People got by. Arguably, a lot of things were BETTER when we didn't have to hear the unfettered opinion of every rabid dipshit with no filter and no impulse control.

        Yahoo doesn't have a responsibility to post these people's ravings. If they want to complain about a Yahoo article, there are a million places to do it. Yahoo isn't stopping them from finding some other forum, or from coming to Slashdot, or leaning over the fence to talk to their neighbour. The way people here are complaining about it, you'd think Yahoo was the only place anyone could have a conversation online anymore. Christ.

        • It's soooo bad our Tech leads have been told to phase out code reviews because any negative comments were hurting the younger developers feelings. Phuck that. I tell those developers if their code sucks and where and why it sucks.Of course I took a HUGE hit on my performance review for doing that. 90% of our developers wouldn't make it in a REAL IT shop! After 30+ years I never thought I'd see how crappy developers are getting.....

          • Consider that maybe you're the one that's unable to keep up in a real dev environment. I've been a programmer for 20 years and I've never had anyone tell me my code 'sucked' when they were correcting it. And I've been corrected by plenty of other (honestly, better) programmers. And I've put in my time to review other people's code. There's really no legitimate reason to say anything 'sucks' when you're doing a review. If the code is really that bad, fire them.

            I think you might be the snowflake here. Suck it

        • by dcw3 ( 649211 )

          "Arguably, a lot of things were BETTER when we didn't have to hear the unfettered opinion of every rabid dipshit with no filter and no impulse control."

          You're here, reading them now though. And you had no need to even see the Yahoo comments section because you had to click on the link to even bring them up. So, if you needed your safe space, you could just move along to the next article. But no, you'd prefer that we no longer have an open forum to express our views, right? So, let's shutdown /. comments

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Friday July 24, 2020 @05:38PM (#60327983) Homepage Journal

      From Yahoo's perspective the comments are a huge time and money sink that offer little benefit. Most drive by readers don't look at them anyway, they just create work for moderators and the legal department.

      Some sites benefit from comments, often because that make the users do the work of moderating them. Of course that leads to groupthink but at least it's cheaper.

    • Comments are an alternative perspective on the mind or mood of the populace.

      I take it you don't browse at -1. Comments without heavy moderation is a cesspool of shit and filth and DOWNLOAD MY HOSTS FILE NOW.

      -APK.

    • Were people really going to Yahoo to get a feel of how the population feels?

      Yahoo removed their comment sections about 15 years ago too. They said they would bring it back soon. It was a few years instead of a few months and by that time I had lost all interest.

      But they had to do something. They were a cesspool

      More recently I was posting on Fox News, which I finally quit because it was ridiculous. They allow comments like "Assassinate Ilhan Omar", but if I say "Trump sucks at doing his job" after posti

      • "Yahoo removed their comment sections about 15 years ago too. They said they would bring it back "

        If more than a couple months go by and nothing materializes, they were lying through their teeth.

        I miss the old Snopes forum, but some playboy wank bought it, began turning the site into shit, and "nEw iMpRoVeD f0rUmZ aNy dAy n0w!" forevermore...... :(

    • People have this delusion that a "safe" environment is one where people are not criticized or contradicted. This is false, a safe environment is one where someone can speak about their experiences without being attacked for using the "wrong word" or "triggering" someone and doesn't feel like they're walking on eggshells all the time.

      A hugbox run by power-hungry narcissists is one of the most destructive environments a vulnerable person can be in.

      • Except most of these 'safe enviroments' are being used to protect people from differing opinions. They devolve into that. What was the road to hell paved with again?

        If a snowflake can't handle the big, bad Internet, all they have to do is reach for the "off" button.

    • Just search for blogs about the article. Those are still a thing.

  • by Camel Pilot ( 78781 ) on Friday July 24, 2020 @04:31PM (#60327765) Homepage Journal

    Unfortunately and even more so in the future, comment sections have become the publishing biosphere for bots.

  • by DrXym ( 126579 ) on Friday July 24, 2020 @04:31PM (#60327767)
    Yahoo was a comment cesspit and one which was obviously vulnerable to exploitation by bots, trolls and idiots.Locking it down is probably a good thing although the better response would be to crack down on the abusers.
  • by presidenteloco ( 659168 ) on Friday July 24, 2020 @04:33PM (#60327771)
    They should just use a slashdot-style peer-moderation system.
    Is that so hard?

    Or would it not work with the broader and possibly more campy/polarized audience of a general site like Yahoo?
    • by DogDude ( 805747 )
      Slashdot has serious problems with people gaming this system, too, unfortunately.
    • The only way that really works effectively without being outright abused and gamed is for everyone to be required to have a user account, it has to be your real name, and you have to prove who you are before you're allowed to have an account in the first place. You'd also probably be required to pay for your access. All that would have a massively chilling effect on free speech to the point where you'd be defeating your own purpose.

      It might be the case here where the only winning move is to not play in t
      • The public Internet is great. The issue is the monetized Internet.

        I think the Slashdot model is appropriate. The news comes from other sites. People go to /. for the commentary. There's no reason to news sites to have comments unless they've sold their souls to the click gods and have abandoned journalism.

    • They should just use a slashdot-style peer-moderation system.

      That assumes that /.'s system works. Given the amount of tripe and garbage I see modded +5 here, that's a groundless assumption. If /. can't stop the facists and trolls, Yahoo! won't fare any better.

  • by OrangeTide ( 124937 ) on Friday July 24, 2020 @04:34PM (#60327775) Homepage Journal

    Many readers who frequently comment on Yahoo News articles are quite upset. Some feel as though they're being censored and that Yahoo has made a huge mistake.

    I mainly visited Yahoo News for the lulz. To see idiots' hot takes on current events, and other hopeless people try to fix these broken human beings. Once in a while you can stumble onto a real train wreak of a thread.

    Mostly you can get a sense of the political leanings of retired bluecollar men and housewives, and start to piece together how Presidential elections work in reality rather than the non-sense polls we're presented. It's a weird thing, you can call up someone and ask them how they will vote, and they'll refuse to answer. But if you put out a soap box, they'll share their opinions with anyone who walks by.

    • If you want to see those kinds of comments, you can always switch to Youtube.

      Youtube seems to trend conservative. Twitter seems to be rather liberal. I don't know why such large platforms tend to trend one way or the other.
      • It's a bit that way with other forms of media. Newspaper readers tend to trend more liberal than television news viewers.

        • If that were the case news sites wouldn't have to turn off comments one by one to keep the narrative alive.
          • Oh I don't agree that a site like Yahoo News is the same as a newspaper, nor attracts the same audience.

            Perhaps the biggest difference between a newspaper is that there is no where to air your grievances or share your hot takes, unless you're sitting at the table in the back of the diner with a bunch of old guys reeking of cigarettes.

        • That's because conservatives can't read. Ever notice how many of them don't even read the laws they sign?

      • Youtube seems to trend conservative. Twitter seems to be rather liberal.

        Who has time to actually watch videos as opposed to reading a short summary?

        • I fucking despise video tutorials because of this. It's so fucking hard to find quick information nowadays because everyone wants to generate so much worthless content in the hopes of becoming a YT star.

          99.5% of the time, a diagram or bullet list will convey information better than a video.

      • That appearance might be an artifact of different ways filter bubble manifests. I don't have personal experience with Twitter, but I gather that users follows certain accounts, and there is less "general searching" that can give you results from an account you're not already associated with. To me that might mean a stronger filter bubble, comparatively

        YouTube I have more experience with. If I had to identify a trend there, I'd say they trend retarded. The flagrancy of the retardation is especially high on a

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

        Probably because of your bias. Twitter is not "rather liberal" but "overwhelmingly far left" to the point where it's very much far left hippie type CEO that likes to spend most of his time pursuing dream of self-enlightenment in third world countries thinks it's skewed left from his perspective.

        Youtube is mostly centrist to conservative, because for all the censorship on youtube, you don't get the twitter/facebook treatment that was outlined in the recent project veritas expose. Where moderators openly stat

    • To see idiots' hot takes on current events, and other hopeless people try to fix these broken human beings. Once in a while you can stumble onto a real train wreak of a thread.

      Are we still talking about Yahoo?

      Any political story on Slashdot has most top rated comments full of hate-filled flamebait these days.

      • Any political story on Slashdot has most top rated comments full of hate-filled flamebait these days.

        I don't recall any halcyon days of civil discourse on /. We've always let people troll, shitpost, and go off topic. It's up to each individual to regulate their behavior, and the results are as varied as you'd expect from any other anarchist commune.

        • The results are better than almost every other comment system in existence, as evidenced by the level of discourse you find elsewhere on the Internet.

          Ignoring issues of scale (which are significant), the /. comment system is better than Twitter, FB, YT, Yahoo, G+, all major newspapers, and many more.

          It's complicated, convoluted, and not very transparent, and that will keep it niche. Media companies want to control the message. Slashcode (mostly) eschews that sort of control. But when your goal is engage the

    • Mostly you can get a sense of the political leanings of retired bluecollar men and housewives,

      Probably not as true as you'd like, but so what if it were?

      You know that those are real people, right, who matter just as much as you do? (And have probably had more and more varied experiences than you?)

  • by ArhcAngel ( 247594 ) on Friday July 24, 2020 @04:47PM (#60327821)
    My bet is Verizon isn't getting the value they thought they could and they're looking for a buyer.
    • Well what did they think would happen? They bought an email service when they already ran one then made it complicated to access it via IMAP/POP. They bought a sight dedicated to psycho SJWs and porn and then proceeded to block the porn. They bought a search engine powered by another search engine which no one likes.

      It stands to reason they'd screw up Yahoo News next. I better find a new source for Finance information, after-all it's only a matter of time...

    • Maybe, but if removing the comments section diminishes traffic, then their plan will have failed. That's because any rich potential buyer is buying traffic.
    • by Mal-2 ( 675116 )

      I don't even think you have to bet, they already did it with Tumblr.

  • I remember the year 2000, it Yahoo was the shit that everyone talked about. But I thought that company was sold to Verizon. Today was the first time in a long time I hear it still exists.
    • I remember 1995. The internet had blue skies, clear of idiots, as far as you could see.
      • by PPH ( 736903 )

        The internet had blue skies, clear of idiots, as far as you could see.

        Usenet would like to have a word with you.

  • ..in my opinion.
    The Internet has become steadily more and more toxic and cancerous, because of how open it is to free speech -- a privilege (and yes, Victoria, it's a privilege) which has been abused.
    In my opinion, the response many sites are going to have will be for things to become increasingly read-only. Break your toys, they get taken away from you, you don't get any new toys.
    Just like the restrictions, rules, laws regarding consumer drone use that all of you drone owners hate, you have the misbeha
  • Alls I know is I go to places like slashdot for my tech/political news so I can read and post comments. Despite the whackjobs and ascii nazis, some of the comments are informative and I walk away knowing more than what I read in TFA. Wisdom of the crowds...that sort of thing.
  • by superdave80 ( 1226592 ) on Friday July 24, 2020 @05:18PM (#60327923)

    Share articles as is and people can share/comment on their preferred platform

    Like... Yahoo? I know that sounds like I'm trying to make a joke at this dumb person's expense, but it's actually just a real question. If you are just horrified at a (completely avoidable) comments section on Yahoo, then wouldn't you be just as horrified on ANY platform or website?

    • It's more likely they hate the dominant perspectives on the platform, so they're dressing it up as "hate and vitriol". I'm sure it was racist and misogynistic as well.

  • by superdave80 ( 1226592 ) on Friday July 24, 2020 @05:23PM (#60327935)

    When you read thru them it was 90% conservative veiws [sic]. Guess they can't allow that type of 'free speech,'"

    Yes, this is the reason.

    a comment section that often contained messages of hate and vitriol.

    No, this is not the reason.

    See, you can just NOT READ the comment section if you don't want to. However, OTHER people can still read the stuff that YOU don't like. And the liberal/progressive/left/whatever you want to call it considers anything conservative to be hate speech, and that justifies blocking it. But in reality, they are truly afraid that people will see that a good chunk of this country is as conservative as it is liberal.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by DogDude ( 805747 )

      And the liberal/progressive/left/whatever you want to call it considers anything conservative to be hate speech, and that justifies blocking it.

      Hate is the only platform of the "conservative" ideology in the US today. There are literally no other principles. Not "family values". Not "small government". They've literally got nothing other than "we hate those people, so let's hurt them".

      • Is it irony or hypocrisy when you make a statement accusing someone else of being the thing you are?

        Either way - Pot, see kettle.

        • by DogDude ( 805747 )

          Is it irony or hypocrisy when you make a statement accusing someone else of being the thing you are?

          Either way - Pot, see kettle.

          Ah. The good ol' "I-know-you-are-but-what-am-I?" gambit. Good play sir. Touche. I have been bested.

  • Temporarily?? No, I think they should make it permanent.

    Comment sections on literally every news site are either painfully hamstrung (slow, heavy-handed review and moderation, like on gizmodo-family sites) or complete anarchy (sites that roll their own or use facebook comments, 2/3 of which are either spam or lunatic ravings).

    The right thing to do would be to punt comments out of the article completely, with a link to (god help us) a reddit post, a slashdot article, or name your favorite community-moderated

  • I've never understood why any media organization would spend huge resources to create content, only to let random people on the internet make any additions they want at the bottom. I'm sure some late-90s tech-bubble logic that comments "drives engagement" made sense at some point, but today people would be more likely to share a link (with their comment) attached on their own social media anyway. Comments make it LESS likely people will share, while opening the door to all kinds of problems.
    • Maybe because somebody might have something important to add, that the news droid missed or flat out got wrong?

      Not all comments are "(tRuMp (or bID3n) r w0rSe teHn hItLEr n tHeY kIk pUpPiEs!!!1!"

  • It's funny to read the comments section because even though most articles are from wire services, these clueless people keep thinking Yahoo has an agenda.

  • I'm very glad to see this. I'd like to see just about all publishing sites go this route.

    The idea of having comments is to help people talk about the news. There were hopes about making "online communities" around websites in the past, but I think that concept is now completely undermined in people's minds: People don't "make community," rather, they mainly or stake out territory, and then fight off anybody who would put different ideas into the space. So it's more like attracting militant squatters, th

    • >I'm very glad to see this. I'd like to see just about all publishing sites go this route

      Lamestream media already did this. Prior to that, they didn't have giant swastikas or trolls, they were generaly well moderated.

      No, comments should NOT go away. What you are proposing is akin to a soundproof room far away from the public where a few people with the same opinion preach to each other.

      Gee, why does this sould familiar?- oh yeah, the "free speech zones" Bush set up cages for during political events, safe

  • If 90% of the comments were one political side, it wasn't representative of the public at large. I can't blame them. I hardly read Slashdot comments anymore because of the vitriol and division within them. There was a time when you could glean useful and insightful information perusing, but not anymore. The one sided partisans have ruined it for everyone, and can be readily seen by the reduction in the number of comments on your average post. The largest number of comments always seem to coincide with

  • Let's get rid of free speech and just have
    pre-canned answers to keep all the
    badthink away while making the dullards
    of society think they still have a voice

    Trump is

    A - The greatest president of the world
    B - A divine God
    C - The best man to ever live
    D - All of the above

  • I am disappointed they've done this.

    I use Yahoo finance a LOT because they have some features other financial sites don't. I've also been using it for a while and I'm used to it.

    The comments sections (anywhere, really) have their share of loons, but there is some seriously good stuff in there. Alternative (cited) arguments, differing views, etc. Good pointers for additional research if you're so inclined.

    As a financial resource, predictably, the comments will lean to the right. Draw from this what concl

  • In general comments can be good, but I gave up on Yahoo's comment sections long before I gave up on Yahoo mail. That's saying something. Why? Because like a lot of things on Yahoo it's larded with some really bad Javascript, and it's shoe-horned in to the mobile "canyon" layout. It's horrible on a PC and not worth it, even when people are saying something worthwhile, which is hardly ever.

    This is just the way it's gone with Yahoo. To please *somebody*, they keep adding crap until it gets so crappy they.

  • You can do news or you can do commentary. You can't really do both. Commentary is driven by engagement, engagement is driven by passion, and passion is driven by framing things in the most sensational manner possible. Commentary is fine as long as your journalistic ambitions are on par with the Equirer. Otherwise, stick to journalism.

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