You are here and so am I: thinking about comment sections in 2022

This essay is meant as an extension of my Pervasive Media Lunchtime Talk about the history, current context and possible futures of comment sections.

When comment sections were first introduced to news websites way back when (and in internet terms, that’s 2007), we can assume there was a fair amount of hope invested in them. ‘People will love this!’ journalists and editors (probably) thought as they saw the tech going live. ‘This will be an unprecedented opportunity for us to have brilliant conversations with the public. Let’s watch all their incredible insights roll in.’ And from that point of view, you can understand where that optimism came from. A channel of dialogue straight to and from your audience! What could go wrong? Well, quite a bit did go wrong – and in 2022, the state of commenting is much worse than they could have predicted.

How bad? Well, when I asked people about their thoughts on comment sections as part of my Amplified Publishing research, I wasn’t surprised by the majority of the answers. The sites mentioned when they thought of comment sections included The Guardian, YouTube, regional news sites like Bristol Live, and Pornhub, and they perceived comment sections as aggressive, depressing and upsetting spaces, thinking those who use them are angry, cruel and bored. As a constant content consumer myself, I understand where they’re coming from. I have also witnessed both sides of how bad they are: I’m a writer myself and I have had my work subjected to the ire of annoyed commenters right from the start. The first encounter I remember was on a guide about how to use Reddit that I penned for a marketing job. One commenter said I sounded like a ‘teenage Alan Partridge hopped up on blue M&Ms’. Isn’t it funny that I can still remember that now, eight years later?

I say I’ve only had ‘encounters’ with comment sections because I’ve never fully let myself read them, let alone respond. It’s all too dangerous. For writers, the comment section is usually so sad, so bad, so mad-making that it’s not worth interacting with, even for a second. The saying ‘don’t read the comments’ is drilled into you from all angles right from the start of your career, and this sentiment was echoed by others in the publishing industry during the interview phase of my research. Other journalists – often covering hot-button subjects like abortion and climate change – found themselves ‘worn down’ by the amount of useless, angry rants they found in the comment sections attached to their work. And while they might have attempted an initial spurt of optimistic engagement with the ravening hordes, they were forced to give up in the face of willful ignorance, trolling, and calculated time-wasting by a select few. One interviewee said that the worst thing about comment sections was that anyone could say you’re lying or under-informed about the very thing in which you’re an expert. Imagine doing your job quite happily one morning before a random person knocks on the door, tells you, ‘you’re shit at that,’ and then keeps walking, leaving you forlorn and paranoid. Why would you buy into a mechanism that lets that happen? There’s also a tiny amount of people doing a hell of a lot of commenting, so you might even get to know that person that shouts into your workplace and then heads off because they just keep on coming back. Not very motivational on a Monday morning. No wonder most comment sections now must be moderated (at staff cost), or banished to gather dust at the bottom of the page forgotten about, or more commonly, don’t exist at all anymore.

So as it stands, comment sections don’t have any positive uses for most of us – which is a shame when you think about the opportunities talking to each other online could present. A wonderful embrace of commenting is in movement over at the New York Times, for example. Instead of rejecting their difficult comment sections by abandoning them and the people that were populating them, they decided to invest. By analysing the problems they were having with their comment sections (the sheer number that needed moderation versus how many staff they have was the main hurdle), they decided to team up with a tech giant to tackle them – and Jigsaw, a technology incubator that’s part of Google’s parent company Alphabet was a good fit. In 2017 they reported that their new system, ‘Moderator,’ which ‘uses machine learning technology to prioritise comments for moderation, and sometimes, approves them automatically. Its judgments are based on more than 16 million moderated Times comments, going back to 2007.’ In 2021, it seems to be paying off. In September they reported on the ‘sense of connection’ their communities continue to enjoy in these machine-moderated spaces; and at the very end of the year, they posted a ‘story of the year’ as told by their comment sections, a true celebration of the commenters that they say ‘add an extra dimension to Times articles, and a lot more.’ You can see how a well-resourced comment section adds value to the work for both reader and publisher.

A wonderful embrace of commenting is in movement over at the New York Times, for example. Instead of rejecting their difficult comment sections by abandoning them and the people that were populating them, they decided to invest.

And there seems to be a lot of other ‘pros’ to the publisher side when comment sections go well. The way that Google ranks your content online – also known as SEO – is decisive in this stretched attention economy. Hit page one of Google’s search results and you’ll be far more likely to be found by searchers. To make sure the sites that Google is pushing to the top of the search results contain fresh new content, their tech ‘scrapes’ pages for new updates. The more updates you have on your page, the more likely you are to be featured higher up and be clicked on, adding to your PPC ad revenue. Google counts comments as one of the ways of updating content. By leaving comments to rack up, you essentially add new content for Google to sniff out and recognise at no further cost to you or your staff. This could be a boon for any online publication, all of whom are at war for clicks.

Another aspect to consider is that by choosing not to interact with commenters, you are potentially shutting out some of the most engaged people on your website. This was mentioned repeatedly in the conversations I had with publishers – they recognised that in most cases, an audience member must feel something very strongly to go to the effort of typing a response and clicking ‘publish.’ Again, we must look to the ecosystem that has emerged in the internet era for a reason why this is so important. In a world where publications are struggling to hold onto star staff – see the great resignation of media professionals in the US for proof of this – the idea of a publisher community is becoming ever more important. Smaller creators seem to have grasped this idea in a more agile way. Notice how writers who have jumped ship from poorly-run publications are now running their own more personality-driven, niche membership models which appeal on a much smaller scale yet appear to have a much stronger, more sustainable following. It’s almost like bigger publications are choosing the tech route, and smaller pubs can hang onto audience relationships more effectively. I associate large publications with audience data capture (the results of which are then sold to the highest bidder), algorithms that pick up on only the largest majority’s behaviours (eventually eating itself), and constant scrabbling for pennies picked up from onsite PPC advertising. In comparison, those who have fled underfed, stretched companies are seeking their own following via Substack, Patreon, Ko-Fi, and a host of others.

Another aspect to consider is that by choosing not to interact with commenters, you are potentially shutting out some of the most engaged people on your website.

Through keeping their audiences on-side by showing a much more human face of content creation without losing any of their credibility, content creators can react much more quickly to what their followers want and can make sustainable incomes that work for them. I have signed up for content from a range of content creators who offer tiered memberships and these have replaced my monthly magazine haul. Instead, I am far more invested in those who are making the work that talks to me most. This is achieved in a variety of ways that make me feel part of a community: interactive Instagram stories with polls and links, behind the scenes glimpses via email, and exclusive content for those who buy in. One of the magazines I pay £3 a month to even has a private Whatsapp for ‘gold’ members, allowing choice in how much you want to commit to the community. Is this something larger publications can learn from? It seems that the clock is ticking for anonymous monoliths that can’t see the value in learning from and investing in the audiences they’re creating content for.

And when I’m considering a fleet of trends like these that seem to relate to comment sections, it leaves me all starry-eyed about what they could be all over again. But I recognise that it’s not as easy as it is for the bankrolled New York Times for most publications, who have largely chosen to move their community efforts over to social media – another effect of not being able to control the content of comment sections when they do go awry. By moving, publications are shifting the responsibility of resource-heavy audience moderation to social media. This is also where the audience has moved, too – an easy win for short-staffed publications. However, by moving your community over to social media sites, you are also putting the power behind your publication in another’s hands. I don’t know about you, but I don’t particularly trust any of the social media head honchos to do what’s best for publications. There might be a lot of functionality already baked into social media that makes it an easier choice than resurrecting your community tools onsite, but all that could be snatched away from you at any moment. Remember how freaked out everyone got when Facebook’s services went down last year? Or when Facebook (and by extension Whatsapp and Instagram) threatened to leave Europe recently? This is sobering stuff when you consider how much money, time and effort is sunk into social media marketing by every publication size. I’m not considering ignoring social media – I just think that having an onsite community that can’t be touched by the unpredictable big guns that populate the Bay Area might be a really good idea.

One valuable trend that has emerged on Facebook is the use of its ‘Groups’ function. Attracting a smaller, more engaged audience subset, Groups allow publications to access those most invested in the publication via a forum setting. Admins from publications can post questions and prompts, gaining vital engagement and insights from the resultant conversations. Often the Group is formed around one idea the publication stands for, making it easier to understand the aim of the community for members. One example is the Facebook Group ‘R29 Money Diary,’ an offshoot of the popular ‘Money Diaries’ series on young women’s magazine website, Refinery29. In this Group, money diaries are posted as they go live online, but more compellingly, this group acts as its own commenting ecosystem, with the most common type of post being members offering conundrums for the rest of the group to solve or comment on. This particular group appears to be a great source of solidarity during the cost of living crisis we’re now facing. This type of member support is not the publication’s intent, but a byproduct of a well-run community that is respectful, helpful and non-abusive. Moderators read each post before it goes live and will even post anonymous questions on behalf of vulnerable members. It’s a great initiative, and it’s only let down by the fact that it’s on Facebook. Half the time I read the valuable input I forget that this is a forum supported by a publication at all. The business side of my brain is thinking, ‘imagine all these page views on the site, where all my advertising is!’ Fair play to Facebook for creating and hosting this very beneficial platform, but they are reaping too many of the rewards on behalf of publishers, IMO. I can see so many elements of what could make comment sections great in this format.

Against this backdrop of ageing or dead comment sections and a massive preference for social media over creating in-house communities by publishers, I am now seeing the gaps between what publishers and audiences want. In response, I am developing a comment section prototype.

After absorbing all the conversations I’ve had with writers, editors, moderators and other publishing types, and also considering my survey’s results, I think I’ve come up with an idea for a trial comment section that answers some of the (well-founded) worries that both audiences and publishers have about hosting and participating in comment sections. This idea is still in development, but I’ll be hosting it on a webpage soon. Let me talk you through the idea, and why I think it could work.

With my prototype I want to combine:

1. A Call To Action - Most comment sections don’t ask audiences or content creators to achieve anything specific. While comment sections that have been left to moulder at the bottom of a page of content invite everything and nothing, social media feels flexible and responsive in comparison, able to jump to attention. How could I bring that energy into a new comment section idea?

2. Contextual Commenting - Back in the day, the content publishing platform Medium used inline commenting, which I thought was pretty genius. Instead of leaving it till the end of your experience to have your say, you were able to highlight any passage to comment on it then and there. It felt a lot more alive and like a conversation. It was also harder to ignore the opportunity to comment. I don’t know why they got rid of this functionality, but I really liked it. How could I bring that energy into a new comment section idea?

3. Opening Up Dialogue Between Audiences & Content Creators - When I think about why I wanted to become a writer in the first place, a lot of that was down to wanting to speak to people in order to know more about the world. A lot of my favourite memories are of interviewing particularly interesting people, or having fascinating conversations off the back of something I’d written. I’m also a huge fan of messaging apps. You’d think that this combination would make me a fan of comment sections as they are – but they’re just too hard to love in their current format.

But what if I, as a content creator, could set the tone of the conversation like social media does, but also have the functionality of inline commenting? What I’m proposing is that content creators could have more control over what they can say, ask and post in a format that imitates that alive, inline commenting that I like so much. Instead of leaving an empty box at the bottom of the page, there’s a running commentary from the creator that adds value throughout the piece. You can see the current appeal of this kind of ‘behind the scenes,’ authentic, personality-driven addition in context right now – YouTube personalities chatting in the comments, Twitch streamers reacting to their audiences throughout streams (with the help of moderators), Instagram influencers going live. I imagine this could work on audio and video too in the same way that Soundcloud allows you to annotate the track you’re listening to.

There are a few reasons I think this could be a step in the right direction towards a comment section that works. We know comment sections are a hotbed for abuse. Is there a possibility that by controlling the parameters for commenting there’s less room for random abuse, but more for constructive back and forth? For example, leaving room for answers to a specific question in the context of an article, and no room for bursts of unfettered interference. It’s just an idea.

The most compelling benefit of this new world order to me is that I would be able to reach out in the way that I want to audiences, asking them what they want to discuss about my work and getting feedback that I then want to reply to because it feels directional and intentional. It puts me back in control of the conversation. As a commenter, I think I would like to be asked things, too. I don’t comment right now because I assume I don’t have anything worth saying. I think a call to action straight from the creator would change that assumption quite a bit.

If this is to become a working prototype, though, we are asking for even more of content creators’ time and effort – they would handle the responsibility of posting the questions in this system and responding to them. And that doesn’t feel fully fair right now, because our cultural habitat is propped up by a community of content creators who are already worked to the bone under a system of underpayment, overwork, and employers that take advantage of the fact that part of the ‘pay’ comes in cultural credibility. This is one idea about how to make comment sections better – but I fully recognise there must be a change in how content creators are treated to make it a viable product on both sides. In order to build a true commons, there must be parity – and at the moment, asking for more from those at the bottom feels simply unfair.

I’ll keep you up to date with my prototype’s progress by updating here when it’s live. Until then follow me on @sammyxjones on Twitter. Thanks Amplified Publishing :)