To Approve or not to approve… On Comment Moderation in Blogging

A while ago, Roger from CMP wrote this phenomenal post on GamerGate which I do recommend reading but his decision to leave an incredibly weird comment by an incredibly odd person up was something that I talked a bit about on the Blaugust discord since it could be seen as “endorsement” (for a lack of a better word).

It’s not that Roger endorses it, of course, which should be abundantly clear especially when you’ve read his post. It’s just that it can be seen as such and it can create an air of unease amongst people who’d otherwise easily be able to share their perspective and thoughts.

So, I just wanted to share some thoughts on this, explain my thought process, and invite discussion on the matter. The intention of this post is not to criticize any person in particular. I think that any blogger can decide themselves what to do with their comments and the moderation on their blog. It’s their blog, so it’s also their rules, right? I’m not here to tell people off or to claim to have some sort of moral highground or authority on the matter. It’s more so that I just wanted to share my two cents on the matter and explain my stance on it.

An air of uneasiness

Something I’ve been mentioning on my blog from time and time again has been that “more freedom means less freedom”. The way I see it, a lack of moderation and rules results in an increase in bigotry, toxicity and misinformation being spread. You can see it on Twitter, for instance, where ever since Musk took over use of the n-word has increased many times over.

“Free Speech Absolutism” doesn’t work. It’s a deeply flawed idea.

So, allowing anyone to say literally anything will create problems in the form of an increase in bigotry and a lack of freedom for those people targeted by others. Anyone that is marginalized in society, from women to people of colour to queer people to people of a faith different from the norm, will increase some form of bigotry in their lives and you cannot prevent it but rules and moderation decrease these instances considerably… and if you allow literally anyone to say anything they want, then those marginalized folks will inevitably feel unsafe and/or threatened and as such leave the places.

Before long, a space that was pretty cool, like a sports pub, might all of a sudden turn into a Nazi pub because people allowed the one Nazi to invite his Nazi friends. Just to name an example.

To bring this back to blogging, the fact that one or two comments riddled with hate speech, toxicity, bigotry and/or dog whistles are present on a blog can already deter many people who’d otherwise feel comfortable talking in those spaces from talking in there and sharing their perspective.

It’s not that I believe that people whose comment section have a comment or two like that are necessarily agreeing with the comments… but it can feel very uncomfortable and it can prevent me in particular from interacting with those places.

Echo Chambers

Now, one could argue that if one doesn’t allow opposing voices, that could lead to the creation of an echo chamber which can be problematic.

If everyone were to just affirm each other non-stop when it comes to specific topics, that could be seen as a circle-jerk and as something that simply is not productive at all. Discussions (especially in politics) don’t mean anything if you’re only talking to people who agree with you… At the same time, though, one shouldn’t play chess with pigeons, right?

With all that said, I do think that one can utter their opinions and disagree on a matter without relying on hateful language, dog whistle terms, and bad faith arguments. I think it’s possible to do, especially when both parties are somewhat smart. Sadly, most people online are stubborn and would rather swallow cyanide than to engage in an argument where they could possibly – goodness me – change their mind!

It’s not just a matter of “agreeing and disagreeing” for some people. It’s a matter of their whole being. If they suddenly change their mind on something they’ve believed in for so many years, then what will become of them? It’s the sunk-cost fallacy all over again!

As such, there are times when you just cannot have a discussion with people that oppose you. Online, there are “debate bros”, as I tend to call them, who will challenge you to a debate on their live stream or whatever… but it just ends up being about who’s louder and who’s better at attacking their opponent’s person. It’s not about arguments. It’s not about debates.

This is toxic and terrible… and a lot of comments I’ve received over the years, especially on that Mr Beast post I wrote a while back, don’t seem like they’d offer any meaningful contributions of any kind if I were to approve them.

The best case scenario with approving them would be that nothing happens and nobody interacts with them but in the worst case scenario, a whole war could break out.

Anyway

To sum this all up, I just think that it’s important to moderate it to a degree. The comments aren’t gone or anything. I just keep them around and look at them from time to time because I find them funny… but I also don’t think there’s any merit in keeping them up for all to see, especially ones were I get called names or insults.

Up there, there is a comment, for instance, where the person states that my “main point” is some kind of convoluted conspiracy that they came up with because that person obviously cannot read a post for a few minutes without giving in to their preconceived notions they might have about me.

Now, I could obviously approve that one particular comment. It’s not hateful, after all, and it’s not insulting or anything… but I do feel like I need to protect that person from themselves in a way. All sorts of other people out there would be able to see how fucking stupid that one person is… and I don’t think that’d be great. If you leave a comment on my blog, you cannot remove it. It’s there forever. I can remove it, however, or – as I do in these cases – I can just unapprove them, meaning they’re still here but invisible.

I wouldn’t want anyone to bully any of these people for saying means things or whatever. Rather, I think that people should just be more aware of what they’re saying… or if they disagree with me on something, they should just try and talk to me about their perspective.

If you’re all nice about the things you say and think, chances are you’ll reach more people with it, too… by which I mean people you disagree with who might join your side. Similarly, if you attack others, chances are they might hate you.

Anyway, this was just a small post I wanted to make for some time now. In the case of Roger’s post, I know for a fact that he’s a pretty rad guy. (I just pointed my thumb up as if you could see that… but you can’t since this is a written post… anyway, Roger got literal thumbs up from me just now, go check him out!)

In the case of streams, for instance, I see some people not moderating their chats and I just end up leaving… in some severe cases, I report them. During the whole wizard game thing, there were plenty of streamers out there who proclaim themselves to provide safe spaces for trans people… and yet their chats were full of transphobic remarks, dog whistles, and insults. I unfollowed, obviously, because even as a cis person, I don’t feel comfortable hanging around bigots.

I think the same applies to blogging in a way… what do you think?

This post was originally written by Dan Dicere from Indiecator.

If you see this article anywhere other than Indiecator.org then this article has been scraped. Please let me know about this via E-Mail.