Automotive News To End Article Comments Dec. 1

by Tim Healey

Published: November 30th, 2021

automotive news to end article comments dec 1

In a sign of the times, Automotive News will be killing comments on its articles, starting tomorrow.

Don’t worry, we have no plans to follow suit.

Automotive News says the issue is a lack of civil discourse. As much as we source AN for our blogs here, I haven’t spent much, if any, time reading comments on its site before today, so I can’t say for sure if the issue is trolls or if users are losing their cool behind the shield of anonymity or if bots, not people, are to blame for bad behavior.

Among the last few days to light up Automotive News comments section w/ your most deranged and unbalanced words pic.twitter.com/grwCJ1vuR6

— Reilly Brennan (@reillybrennan) November 29, 2021

Comments go away Dec. 1, though you can still comment on articles via AN’s Facebook page.

I’ve seen other journalism outlets — mostly outside the automotive space — kill comment sections as bad behavior has taken over for good-faith, civil discourse. Spam bots are also an issue. On the one hand, dropping comments might make the user experience better for readers.

On the other hand, given the price one pays for an Automotive News subscription, it’s a bit surprising the company isn’t investing in better moderation. It’s also surprising that the bad behavior is occurring in the first place — you might expect a site that’s free to read drawing people with bad intent, but it’s harder to wrap your brain around why people who pay a lot for content would spend their time acting like jerks in the comment section.

On yet the other hand, humans can be a-holes, and perhaps there’s a feeling of entitlement brought about by spending so much?

All I know is that our comment section is going nowhere, and we’ll thank our hard-working mods for keeping our section (mostly) free of spam, bad-faith arguments, flame wars, and bigotry.

You in the B and B are a big part of this site. Please keep things civil — apparently, those who visit AN couldn’t do so.

[Image: fizkes/Shutterstock.com]

#AutomotiveJournalism #AutomotiveNews #Internet #InternetComments #Journalismism

Tim Healey

Tim Healey grew up around the auto-parts business and has always had a love for cars — his parents joke his first word was “‘Vette”. Despite this, he wanted to pursue a career in sports writing but he ended up falling semi-accidentally into the automotive-journalism industry, first at Consumer Guide Automotive and later at Web2Carz.com. He also worked as an industry analyst at Mintel Group and freelanced for About.com, CarFax, Vehix.com, High Gear Media, Torque News, FutureCar.com, Cars.com, among others, and of course Vertical Scope sites such as AutoGuide.com, Off-Road.com, and HybridCars.com. He’s an urbanite and as such, doesn’t need a daily driver, but if he had one, it would be compact, sporty, and have a manual transmission.

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1337cr3w on Dec 01, 2021

There is a general trend across the internet to eliminate public discourse. They say that it's to prevent trolling / toxicity / disinformation etc. That's all well and good, but it's leading to an internet where the only things we see are dictated by corporate and government interests.

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SoCalMikester on Dec 01, 2021

past year has been nothing but trumptards with the usual lies. biden won- deal with it

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