Online Comments Are More Than Society’s Cesspit

I refuse to think of online comments as society’s cesspit. There is value.

Some love them, and many hate them — the commenting sections on online news sites. There they are rambling, the angry, the mean-spirited, the hating people. A sinister snakepit, somewhere below the articles, where only the dark souls arrive.

Admittedly, this sounds dramatic, layered with some dripping pathos. However, the opinion on online comments is low — also in 2020. A while ago, a journalist wrote on Twitter: “I say it over and over again: If I’d be an editor-in-chief, there wouldn’t be any comments on my site.”

Today, journalism cannot afford such an attitude. The internet not only democratized the public sphere to some degree but also introduced the era of interaction. It is a fallacy to think that closing the comment sections would be a solution. The debates simply emigrate: to the giants of Silicon Valley or, worse, in chats, concealed from society.

It is true, “the effort which is persued for online comments is significant,” as persoenlich.com writes. It is also true for us at Blick.ch. However, we are tempted to only focus on the raw numbers. More comments mean more clicks, more reach, more ad revenue. That notion is short-sighted.