In Praise of Reader Comments

They matter … which is why the Establishment hates them.

I defended Aaron Rodgers for not getting vaccinated and that was it for my posting days at The Athletic.

I actually got my start as a Substack author by making numerous posts in the Reader Comments of other Substack writers.

I did this because the places where I could make comments at mainstream media sites were being taken away at an alarming clip.

To practice my “free speech,” I had to keep moving and find places that still allowed such speech. These were little havens of sanity where I found people who thought like I do or sites where I could at least post my contrarian musings and provide links to articles I thought more people needed to see.

Lesson 1: In a world of Mass Censorship, those of us who recoil at this trend will find somewhere we can offer our views.

I bet others have noticed what I’ve noticed. The big mainstream corporate media Internet sites have cracked down on Reader Comments.

Many sites that once allowed comments no longer do. Other sites allow only paid subscribers to comment. Other sites allow some comments, but these are heavily “moderated,” which means some anonymous gatekeeper of speech gets to decide which posts get published and which don’t.

Today I’m sharing a few personal anecdotes involving the posting policies at Zero Hedge, Citizen Free Press, al.com and The Athletic which reveal the good, bad and the ugly on the topic of “reader comments,” which is actually a very important topic.

Zero Hedge has become a powerhouse because of Reader Comments

The reason I post so much at Zero Hedge is simple. I quickly figured out that if you want your thoughts to reach a lot of people, post somewhere that a lot of people read and visit.

I wouldn’t be surprised if most Zero Hedge readers visit the site on a daily basis just to read the Reader Comments (and make their own posts). This is probably the key to the eye-opening growth of this “alternative media” site, which is now one of the largest Internet sites in the world.

Maybe I’m being naive, but I like the fact that my words might be influencing debates I care about. Zero Hedge has led the way in showing what’s possible by allowing anyone and everyone to make Reader Comments.

Citizen Free Press lives up to its name

To me, Citizen Free Press is simply a better substitute for what The Drudge Report once did. Except CFP also allows Reader Comments.

As I noted yesterday, the site has now picked up eight of my Substack articles. The reason their content editors probably did this is I made little posts in their Comments Section, summarizing some of my Substack articles.

This reveals another important point about the best sites that allow Reader Comments. You also get to include links. This allows many more people to see articles they wouldn’t know about otherwise. I know this: If the Citizen Free Press didn’t allow Reader Comments, half the people reading this article would have never heard of Bill Rice, Jr.

Much has been written about the censorship at Twitter and Facebook. What this censorship really does is BLOCK posts that include important links. Because of this, articles that might have gone viral - and made a difference (and even saved lives) - never do.

The way people like myself get around this form of censorship is to post our links at sites like Zero Hedge, Citizen Free Press and our favorite Substack sites. If we couldn’t do this, we’d really be sunk as a society.

I think the Powers that Be (who rely on a captured “free press”) actually fear Reader Comments and, if they had their druthers, would shut down any site that still allows this form of speech or communication.

Which brings me to my final two examples (the bad and the ugly) ….

al.com dominates “news coverage” in my state … so we get no real news

al.com is still the biggest “news organization” in my home state of Alabama (meaning this Internet site has the most visitors). Once upon a time, al.com was three traditional newspapers - The Birmingham News, The Mobile Press Register and The Huntsville Times.

Like with all media, a series of purchases and consolidations completely transformed my state’s news media. A company called Advance Local now owns these three newspapers,  none of which will publish print editions after February.

The day of the big-city newspaper being thrown in yards throughout the state - and being sold at news stands at every convenience store - are long gone.

Once upon a time, The Birmingham News - by itself - must have employed 200 journalists, editors and photographers. Today, the three merged newspapers may employ 30 full-time journalists. (I could research this number, but the “staff boxes” are also gone. It’s almost like these companies don’t want people to know how barren their “newsrooms” really are. Plus, I don’t think they have newsrooms any more. Everyone - all 30 writers - works from homes in their PJs).

When al.com debuted in my state and went “all in” on the Internet, the company DID allow Reader Comments. And, man, were they popular.

True, many posters were “out there” and threads were sometimes taken over by a few insult-slinging citizen correspondents, but readers at least had a forum where we could point out how ridiculous the articles proper were.

This is why I think Advance Local did away with their Reader Comments section a couple of years ago. While I’m sure valid economic reasons factored into this decision, the real reason was probably that Commenters were making much more sense than the paid journalists.

All the “narratives” that the site’s publishers wanted to advance and protect were being shot down by a couple of skeptics making posts in the Reader Comments. That is, every unfair and unbalanced article could be rebutted immediately.

As more people were reading the Reader Comments than the articles, this defeated the entire purpose of owning a newspaper. If you own a newspaper to control the message, you can’t control the message if thousands of readers are alerting fellow citizens about the bias and agendas of the owners and their clone-like staffers.

So al.com simply shut down their Reader Comments. Since the site almost never runs guest op-eds and the “letter to the editor” is now extinct at these three “newspapers”….  that was it for contrarian “Reader Feedback.”

The Athletic banned me for being an anti-vaxxer

The Athletic is a sports site that was recently purchased by The New York Times (“Danger, Will Robinson!”)

Since I’m a sports fan, I took advantage of one of the publication’s discounted “introductory” subscription offers two or so years ago. I also appreciated the fact The Athletic had a Reader Comment section. A former sports editor myself, this allowed me to opine on sports topics.

Then Covid arrived. Needless to say, I was not impressed by the way The Athletic’s journalists were covering the impact of this virus on the sports world. Basically, every non-pharmaceutical intervention Fauci supported, the writers and editors of The Athletic supported.

No fans in stadiums? The editors and scribes at The Athletic all thought this was great.

Make non-sick athletes get tested four times a week? Yes, this definitely needed to happen.

Cancel numerous games because too many athletes had to be in mandatory 14-day quarantines? This certainly had to be done to protect these vulnerable athletes - and the grandmothers who might be standing behind these athletes in the grocery store line after practice.

Mandatory masks - even for coaches at outside games? The Athletic supported this 100 percent. When a coach or player got fined $30,000 for letting his mask slip below his mouth, The Athletic endorsed these punishments/thefts.

My take-away from reading The Athletic during these times is that the sports journalists were more woke and brainwashed than the news journalists.

I of course started making contrarian posts.

Why don’t you guys write a story telling readers how many athletes have actually died from Covid, I asked. Of all these positive cases you keep reporting, what percentage of these athletes were “asymptomatic” and never even had a cough?

I thought these were good questions that no Athletic staffer had thought to ask, but for some reason no one followed up on my story suggestions.

I was finally banned from making comments when I kept defending the four or five athletes who refused to get vaccinated.

For a while, I snuck a few posts in, but they were all quickly deleted. If you go back and read one of The Athletic’s Comment Sections, you might see 150 posts (of readers who support the narrative) and then 40 messages that said “Deleted post.” Here we had a screen shot that revealed our New Normal Media World.

Bottom line: I literally could not share my support of Aaron Rodgers.

I tried to protest and find a real, live human being who would tell me what posting guidelines I had violated, but the people doing all the censoring never come out of their posting caves.

Needless to say, I cancelled my subscription.

Reader Comments might be the best weapon our side has

As I mentioned, The Athletic is now owned by The New York Times. I’m sure the paper wouldn’t have purchased this sports site if it didn’t have a policy that banned “extremist” and “dangerous” posters such as myself.

Anyway, these companies hate, despise and fear Reader Comments. They say they support “democracy” and value “diversity,” but if your version of democracy doesn’t mesh with their totalitarian version - “no posting for you!”

But some Reader Comments Sections survive. Thanks to Substack, I’ve now even got my own Reader Comment section. Whether we realize it or not, this is a weapon we can use against these Big Brother sycophants. I say let’s use it while we still can.