"Engagement" is always a minority, no one is going to post while driving their car. Even on techdirt, you aren't going to comment on stories which are innoucous or ones you have no problem with. That's fine, if people don't have anything to say, its for the best that they don't "engage", can you imagine hundreds of thousands of comments per story? That's not engagement, its chaos.
Comments have value because they are the final place for dissent, and whether people like it or not, dissent has value because otherwise you are placing your blind belief in authority, which suits those with a bully pulpit. Sure many times the dissent is wrong, but so what, don't people understand the value of free speech? You can ignore bad ideas, but if authorities clamp down on free speech, even the good ideas die, and in reality, in such conditions, bad ideas flourish.
This is why so many publications on the left have ended up closing their comments. It wasn't trolling, it wasn't "moderation", it was something far more disturbing, they were afraid their authority was being eroded by constantly being show to be wrong, being called out for their bias. They wished to go back to their position as preacher on a pulpit speaking to their flock. Simply the platform alone gives them far more credibility and sway than anyone else, and they didn't want anyone to question it.
Maybe men do comment more, men are more combative. But in battle of ideas, why is this a bad thing. Perhaps men and women aren't the same, isn't that a dangerous thought.
I've seen what goes on in "women friendly" comment sections. Like with the Mary Sue and such feminist websites where they allow comments only because they ban anyone who speaks against their ideology. They are just as cruel and trollish, its just their venom is directed only at the "right kinds of people", and so is allowed..unchecked.
The echo chamber of "engagement", or simply this effort to preserve their "appeal to authority". Orsen Well's War of the Worlds broadcast worked because there was no "clique" in a comment section to call doubt, this is the time those in media long for again, when they could control the narrative, when they were the ultimate chosen clique with a bully pulpit.
Techdirt has not posted any stories submitted by Trash Fire.
Re:
"Engagement" is always a minority, no one is going to post while driving their car. Even on techdirt, you aren't going to comment on stories which are innoucous or ones you have no problem with. That's fine, if people don't have anything to say, its for the best that they don't "engage", can you imagine hundreds of thousands of comments per story? That's not engagement, its chaos.
Comments have value because they are the final place for dissent, and whether people like it or not, dissent has value because otherwise you are placing your blind belief in authority, which suits those with a bully pulpit. Sure many times the dissent is wrong, but so what, don't people understand the value of free speech? You can ignore bad ideas, but if authorities clamp down on free speech, even the good ideas die, and in reality, in such conditions, bad ideas flourish.
This is why so many publications on the left have ended up closing their comments. It wasn't trolling, it wasn't "moderation", it was something far more disturbing, they were afraid their authority was being eroded by constantly being show to be wrong, being called out for their bias. They wished to go back to their position as preacher on a pulpit speaking to their flock. Simply the platform alone gives them far more credibility and sway than anyone else, and they didn't want anyone to question it.
Maybe men do comment more, men are more combative. But in battle of ideas, why is this a bad thing. Perhaps men and women aren't the same, isn't that a dangerous thought.
I've seen what goes on in "women friendly" comment sections. Like with the Mary Sue and such feminist websites where they allow comments only because they ban anyone who speaks against their ideology. They are just as cruel and trollish, its just their venom is directed only at the "right kinds of people", and so is allowed..unchecked.
The echo chamber of "engagement", or simply this effort to preserve their "appeal to authority". Orsen Well's War of the Worlds broadcast worked because there was no "clique" in a comment section to call doubt, this is the time those in media long for again, when they could control the narrative, when they were the ultimate chosen clique with a bully pulpit.
Techdirt has not posted any stories submitted by Trash Fire.
Submit a story now.