The Death of the Comments Page

Many readers will have noticed a chill wind sweeping through the publishing industry. Especially during COVID, they will have become accustomed to commenting on some obscure corner of the internet, far from the toxic cesspools of Twitter and the other social media giants. But unfortunately, there is a growing demand amongst recent generations for polite and congenial speech, rather than the free-for-all which the internet was, for those of us who were here when it all began.

One of the benefits of the fact the earliest users of the internet were academics and hobbyists, was that back then the former were staunch defenders of free expression and the latter were at best asocial, at times positively anti-social. It was an exciting place- I can remember first signing on in Hong Kong, when the internet was free and tax was 15% for high earners. Licensing a car, however, was exorbitantly expensive and the local residents used laser disks instead of VHS. Buildings would go up almost overnight, and there was a certain car park where you could stand on the roof and feel the jetwash as the planes came in. If you happened to listen to a band in an expat bar and they were called the MD’s they were more likely to be on the boards of world renowned companies than doctors.

Much has changed. There have been various attempts by governments to curtail free expression, sometimes under the guise of targeting false information and at other times because it can become a haven of extremism. The former is the price we pay for liberty and the latter actually makes the job of those shadowy arms of government which alarm some of us, whilst comforting others, a good deal easier.

But don’t let them fool you. It’s not about targeting anti-vaxxers, combating hate or even taking down the people who threaten, bully and spout vile racist abuse. It’s about silencing the mob, and those we disagree with, because the establishment worldview would rather the plebs not have the opportunity to spout their uncouth bilge. And this is why comments pages are dying one by one.

The latest casualty in this unfolding drama is the comments section of Quillette. I hear some of you groan at this. Many on Reddit are convinced the Quillette and its commenters are all far-right trolls. In some ways, it’s true- the more vocal readership does lean Right, and can be genuinely hostile to those with centre Left or progressive views. The highly unusual numerical advantage they happen to hold on the site, can make those on the Left feel as though they are under a deluge, as a stream of people take exception to a particular phrase, or an unwillingness to engage with their core arguments.

But this is nothing that the Right hasn’t been feeling for a couple of decades, as their reading and viewing choices shrink down to a choice between Fox and a few publications which have increasingly become awash with neocon and neoliberal viewpoints. For the intelligent conservative, there is little in the way of intellectual grist. They have long since been drummed out of most universities, or forced into silence in order to protect their jobs. Conservative historians are now outnumbered in the academy 34 to 1, which is odd, considering the principal role of history used to be the preservation of a legacy for future generations. So it was perhaps predictable that they would cherish an obscure little corner of the internet and be somewhat unwelcoming to interlopers.

In this case, the comments section was taken down because many commenters on the Left felt bullied. Several readers took issue with certain articles, and made their thoughts known to the authors of said articles. Picture a meltdown at a Thanksgiving family gathering and you will get the general idea. The problem is that it was all but inevitable. It’s the only argument to deploy against the Libertarian which gives them pause. Human distributed networks tend to polarise over time, and in the digital age this necessarily leads to destabilization. The technology allows for our societies to come apart at a rate which is most comparable to motion capture video. Niall Ferguson has remarked that the last great information revolution, the printing press, led to burnings at the stake and the religious wars of Europe.

There is a bright side, if you are one of those who becomes frustrated with the enthusiasts of Austrian economics and Frederic Bastiat, it’s a deadly argument to deploy. That anarcho-capitalism is doomed to fail and the polarisation of human distributed networks is what led to Fascism, Communism, Nazism and Wokeism, was well as numerous lesser cults cordoning themselves off from the broader world. But it should also alarm us, it should frighten us silly.

I can certainly understand Claire Lehmann’s point of view. Her aim was always free speech for publishing dissenting views, not free expression for her readership. It’s probably an unbearable headache which distracts from her core mission. Plus, there is the liability issue, and the nagging fear that someday governments might come for her site under the pretext of going after supposed trolls. It probably caused her the odd sleepless night, because in the Culture War, even something as trivial as the T-shirt someone wears can be rapidly weaponised.

I think people fundamentally misunderstand this point about the Tech Oligarchs. It’s easy to be cynical and think its all about money and power, or if one is somewhat more astute, a perennial fear of government, or the pitchforks. But that really isn’t it. They are Victor Frankenstein beginning to worry about his creation. The destabilisation of societies has long been the area of expertise for the intelligence services, but until recently no one knew just how susceptible human networks were to hacking or destabilization. It may well be their Frankenstein’s monster which brings it all crashing down, and they are desperately worried that their utopian dream might turn into a dystopian nightmare.

But there has to be a home for the dissenters and heretics, and the odd old and cantankerous reprobate. Without dissent we don’t survive. We are doomed to what Nassim Nicholas Taleb calls The Dictatorship of the Small Minority. Far from creating centres of excellence the chromatogram of what others have called memetic tribes, creates a featureless wasteland in the distance between distinct towers or peaks.

There has to be a place for the obnoxious, odious and disagreeable to gather, because in the final analysis they might have an interesting perspective. Plus, it’s always better to let people have their say, because whilst some might find their outlook objectionable, feelings of isolation, alienation and ostracism are far more dangerous to the common good than a little mostly harmless speech.

For the record, I was until quite recently what some would describe as a cosmopolitan liberal- a lifelong LibDem voter who thought that conservatives were needlessly unfeeling towards those less fortunate than themselves. It was only Brexit and the fear that I had fundamentally misdiagnosed people, that made me think again. I was just lucky that I happened to read The Righteous Mind- which, in the modern context, would have to rate in the top two category of books by public intellectuals. Even for those who dislike the other one- and find Steven Pinker hopelessly naive- you have to admit that he does free people up to worry about the important things, like our ability to annihilate ourselves through pointless aggression.

I wonder what the great thinkers of the Enlightenment would think of it all. John Stuart Mills would turn in his grave. Voltaire would grab his pistol, or sabre. Perhaps a better way of doing things would be to actually allow us to live in our bubbles, but also make the membership of each group expel the truly irredeemable, whilst publishing the best examples of democratically decided excerpts across domains to other user groups.

There has to be a way to obliterate the cardboard cut-outs, the grotesque mythical parodies we believe about each other. I am just as certain that the vast majority of BLM activists aren’t violent as I am that there is no growing legion of white supremacists. Unfortunately, we are all always judged by the preconceptions that others hold about whichever faction they happen to find objectionable. The ‘evidence’ is always a judgement based upon extremes. The New Zealand Shooter for example, saw the the American Conservative Movement as the greatest roadblock to his odious ‘movement’- a fact little reported by a legacy media desperate to create a link between a narcissistic Orange Reality TV Star and white supremacy.

The mainstream viewpoint is so tedious and boring, after all. The politicians of today are like the advertising images of yesteryear, promising us that smoking is healthy, or condemning Islamophobia as they get ready to bomb yet another Middle Eastern country back to the Stone Age. Universal Healthcare cannot be done, even as America spends more per citizen on healthcare with public money than the UK. The money is earmarked you see- they’ve decided to spend it all on the most reliable voting demographic, the elderly and just haven’t bothered to tell you- even though we all know that 80% of all lifetime medical expenditure is incurred during the last few years before our deathday.

And whilst we’ve have been quibbling about Dr Seuss. told that the minimum wage won’t happen, talked about the corporate tax rate (when you should really look up corporation tax as a percentage of revenue- it will surprise you- because its all about the bottom line), does anyone even know why the Russians have backed down? The Conjuror’s Art has always been distraction- and we have been, distracted that is- to the point of growing derangement.