MacWorld, PCWorld Kill Site Comments Because They 'Value And Welcome Feedback'

from the this-muzzle-shows-how-much-I-love-you dept

For a while now the trend du jour in online media is to not only block your readers from making news story comments, but to insult their intelligence by claiming this muzzling is driven by a deep-rooted love of community and conversation. NPR, for example, muted its entire readership because, it claimed, it "adored reader relationships." Reuters and Recode, in contrast, prevented their own users from speaking on site thanks to a never-ending dedication to "conversation." Motherboard similarly banned all on-site reader feedback because it greatly "values discussion."

There's a number of reasons to ban comments, but few if any have anything to do with giving a damn about your community. Most websites, writers and editors simply don't want to spend the time or money to moderate trolls or cultivate local community because it takes a little effort, and quality human discourse can't be monetized on a pie chart. Instead, it's easier and cheaper to simply outsource all public human interactivity to Facebook. In addition to being simpler, it avoids the added pitfalls of a public comment section where corrections to your story errors are posted a little too visibly.

Few outlets can actually admit any of this, so instead we get bizarre platitudes about how moving bi-directional website interactivity backward is some kind of ingenious media evolution. Case in point: IDG last week joined the fun and announced that all of its media outlets (Macworld, NetworkWorld, PCWorld, etc.) would be removing news comments moving forward. According to the company, this change is a reflection of IDG's ongoing commitment to feedback:

"At IDG, we’ve always valued and welcomed feedback from our readers, and that’s something that will never change. What is changing, however, is one facet of how we get your feedback.

Again, nothing quite says we "welcome feedback" like preventing all public, on-site feedback. Just like other news outlets, IDG insists that shoving interested community members over to social media is the same thing as retaining an on-site community:

"This change was made for a couple of important reasons. First, more and more of you are already communicating with us, and with one another, via social media, where our editors and reporters are posting content and interacting with readers throughout the day.

Second, while we’ve always valued comments, we’ve also had to deal with the reality of managing spam and policing inappropriate comments—comments that don’t reflect the professional nature of our audiences and diminish the value of community interaction. Moving the discussion to social media obviates those issues."

Well for one, this idea that managing spam and trolls is some kind of sisyphean impossibility is nonsense. You'll find countless websites (this one included) where spam and trolling is minimized and public interactivity is still protected (often by the community itself). In fact, some studies have suggested that just having website employees show up and give a damn can have a dramatic, positive impact on your local community. If you see consistent trolling and spamming in news comments it means somebody, somewhere doesn't give a shit. Pretending otherwise is a cop out your readership can see through.

This pretense that social media interactivity is the same as more niche on site conversation is also problematic. As feedback is offloaded to social media, we're seeing an overall reduction in transparency when it comes to news reader interaction. Many social media users exist in cordoned off areas where they only have a limited view of the conversation (protected Tweets, etc), which harms transparency. But that's the whole point for many editors: a return to the "letters to the editor" era where you get to control the conversation, even if it comes at the cost of users spending less time on your website.

All of that said, stand still so I can kick you repeatedly in the shin out of my deep-rooted love of your ability to walk.

Filed Under: comments, conversation, feedback, macworld, pcworld
Companies: idg

Who's Who Of Clueless Music Industry Lobbyists Send Angry Letter To Wrong Publisher

from the nice-work-guys dept

Sometimes it just feels like the legacy music industry folks spend their time trying to make it easy for us to call them on their bizarre positions. The latest is a pretty laughable angry letter from a who's who of the organizations, who represent the past of the music industry. Signers to the letter include (among others) the heads of the RIAA, ASCAP, SoundExchange, BMI, SESAC, NMPA, AFTRA, Harry Fox and the Songwriter's Guild. The target of their scorn? Well, officially, it's the CEO of Ziff Davis, publisher of PC Mag, for publishing two articles in the wake of the shutdown of Limewire telling people about "alternatives" to Limewire. The problem? Well, beyond being totally pointless, PC Mag only published one of the articles (the one the letter seems to find less objectionable). The other article that they complained about was published by a totally different publication. Accuracy is not big with the old school music industry, it seems.

Yes, PC Mag published an article highlighting alternatives to LimeWire, just like a ton of other websites did. Anyone who was looking for an alternative to LimeWire didn't need PCMag to find them. In fact, many reports noted a noticeable increase of downloads of those alternatives pretty quickly after LimeWire went down. The lobbyists get pretty worked up about all this, though:

Let's be honest. The vast majority of LimeWire's users were interested in one thing and one thing only: downloading our music for free with the full knowledge that what they were doing was illegal. The harm done to the creative community when people are encouraged to steal our music is immeasurable. Disclaimer or no, when you offer a list of alternative P2P sites to LimeWire -- and include more of the serial offenders -- PC Magazine is slyly encouraging people to steal more music and place at risk the tens of thousands of music industry jobs -- including singers, songwriters, musicians and the technical professionals who put it all together. Even worse is offering a direct link to a "resurrected" Limewire as follows: "I went ahead and downloaded LimeWire Pirate Edition for *ahem* research purposes, and can report that it appears to be working very smoothly. In the event that you, yourself, would like to do some research, you can download the client here (direct link)."

Yes, they're quite upset about that article about the LimeWire Pirate Edition (which we wrote about as well). Only problem? PCMag didn't publish it. Nor did any other Ziff Davis publications. It was actually in PC World, which is published by IDG -- a totally different company than Ziff Davis. Now, it's not hard to confuse PCMag and PC World -- lots of people do. But when sending an angry letter condemning a publisher, you would think that maybe one of these super powerful industry lobbyist/mouthpieces would think to actually check the sources before mouthing off.

Apparently not.

Given this mistake, it should come as little surprise that the rest of the letter is also full of factually ridiculous claims, such as "job loss" numbers due to "piracy" -- numbers that have been widely debunked so many times that it's almost pathological that these groups still cling to them like some talisman. Also, it's kind of funny that they imply the publishing business would feel differently if it had also been decimated by free competition (they call it "piracy," but they mean free competition). Ziff Davis is, in fact, a shell of its former self due to exactly that situation. However, the company has been trying hard to resurrect itself by actually competing in the marketplace -- something the signers of this letter could learn from.

Of course, I'm sort of curious what these groups actually think they're accomplishing with a letter like this. If it's to pressure magazines like PC Mag (or, ahem, PC World) not to publish such stories, that won't stop the info from getting out there. It will only increase the irrelevance of those publications -- especially if they feel brow-beaten by a bunch of dinosaurs, who refuse to adapt no matter how many times it's been shown to them how they can embrace the future successfully. This really feels like the sort of letter that these guys signed onto so they can show their constituency that they're "doing something" by stomping their feet, rather than actually doing something helpful like helping those they represent to adapt and embrace new opportunities. The full amusing letter is included after the jump...

Filed Under: fact checking, journalism, lobbyists, music industry, pc mag, pc world, publishing
Companies: ascap, bmi, idg, nmpa, riaa, sesac, sga, soundexchange, ziff davis