Ulterior Motive to VICE Disabling All Comments

Removing the comments section helps obscure low reader engagement.

Yesterday Vice announced that it will be closing down all comments on vice.com. Naturally my skepticism was piqued because Vice never really had much of a comments section. Therefore, deleting the comments section would serve as way to obscure how many people engage with their content.

I asked the author of the announcement, editor-in-chief Jonathan Smith, why not alternatives? Silence. As usual.

It’s easy to dismiss Vice’s move as an industry trend. However, things are a little more nuanced. Reuters disabled most comments but keeps some open for the opinion section. The New York Times keeps approximately 10 percent of articles open for comment. The only notable site lacking a comments section is Vox which launched without comments, promising them later, and then never following through.

The Guardian decided to keep their comments section after an analysis of 70 million comments. They found that only 2% required blocking and 2% were considered spam. “For the most part, Guardian readers enrich the journalism.” The Guardian is only removing comments on “stories relating to a few particularly contentious subjects, such as migration and race.”

Maaayyyybe: Vice fully considered the loss of a comments section and decided to delete it or maybe the deciding factor was that Shane Smith and Vice executives have a board meeting in January to discuss an I.P.O. and they want to obscure their lower than advertised traffic numbers for banks doing due diligence. One takes effort and a commitment to dialogue the other makes a conman rich.