I understand the issues with comments but I feel publishers are making a mistake. NPR recently said their comments are non-​representative of their total listeners and are annoying to users and take time to moderate, so… they’ll remove them and let you comment on Twitter, Facebook, etc. But are people talking on Twitter, Facebook, etc always making delightfully erudite comments on shows? Are social media posters representative of all NPR listeners? Hell no. So publishers make this decision to send the user base and activity to other internet platforms, then they complain that all their traffic is being captured by and funneled through social media…

Maybe publishers should start competing head-​to-​head with internet platforms: going for network effects, monthly active users, making recommendation and personalization systems, that kinda thing. Not going “oh, some people don’t like reading our comments, so we deleted our user activity system.” At least the NYT is making an effort keep the comments in place and use tech to help with moderation.