The Inquirer recently announced that they're removing comments on most of their website. This is a trend that I've been seeing with news publisher websites and am quite happy with. Most comments are usually spam or they're a dumpster of fire ill-informed opinions from people trying to spread one agenda or another. When you make a public scribbling board to write whatever the hell you want on it, people will indeed write whatever the hell they want. People visit news sites for information written by a journalist or someone familiar with the topic, not to read some jackass's opinion.
Having comments on literally everything such as news articles, videos, images, etc is more trouble than it's worth. We've seen Facebook, Google, Twitter, etc struggle with content moderation because it's an extremely difficult task. It doesn't make sense for news websites and magazines to be spending their resources on it (also, it slows down the page from loading in my browser).
I'd also like to see news publishers pull this off on their social media channels. Some of the most idiotic, awful, and ignorant comments I've ever seen have been in the comment section of a news publishers Facebook post. But sadly comments=engagement=more eyeballs=more clicks=more ad revenue.
Overall, I applaud this trend.
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