Why are the comments disabled of many of the "Apple's racial initative" articles here?

[the8thark]

Why are the comments disabled of many of the "Apple's racial initative" articles here?
Is this because you fear the comment section would devolve to people just attacking each other with little constructive debate occurring?

In my opinion we should be able to comment on these topics. I'm fully aware Apple will not change anything in relation to this no matter what is said in the comments here, but we members should be able to voice our opinions on this. Be it in agreeance or be it holding Tim Cook and Apple to account? Do you believe the above fear of the comment section devolving into a rabble is worth removing our ability to have a say on these articles directly as comments to the articles themselves?

Being forced to make a PRSI topic every time is quite annoying.

I just think we as members deserve to know why this choice was made.

 

[WildCowboy]

You might want to read through this thread if you haven't already. It's unfortunate, but when a thread is inevitably going to go poorly and require loads of volunteer moderator time to keep it even marginally in line, it's too much of a burden on them. Turning off comments entirely on certain articles is something we've been testing, and it seems to be helping significantly.

 

[PhightinPhils26]

I would guess it's to protect against hate speech, and it will likely be a moderation nightmare.

 

[svanstrom]

Problem is that MR has reached a form of equilibrium where racist posters are dealt with only by killing the comment sections on the posts where they would go off; keeping the obvious racism at the MR comment sections at a "tolerable" level, rather than the mods/owners having to deal directly with those regularly making racist comments.

 

[Longkeg]

Not for nothin’ but this is a TECH forum. And while everyone is entitled to their opinion that’s not to say everyone knows what they’re talking about (on every subject under the sun) or is trying to build consensus among those with different ideas.

My opinion: stick to conversations about Kernel Panics and Router configurations, SSDs and refresh rates... you get the idea. The stuff that brought you here in the first place.

 

[svanstrom]

My opinion: stick to conversations about Kernel Panics and Router configurations, SSDs and refresh rates... you get the idea. The stuff that brought you here in the first place.

All things Apple is what brought me here; and not having visited the forums in a looong time it caught me by surprise how absolutely entrenched a certain group of people are, not to mention how some of them have been allowed to keep causing trouble by skirting the letter of the rules.

Like seriously… Right now MR can not allow comments on any news related to what Apple does as far as black communities or black people.

Let that sink in, in 2021 a website have to sort of self-censor themselves to avoid the blatant racism that comes from some of their members.

Then again, they don't exactly have to do that; rather it's what they've chosen to do. They rather not do anything about the people that have gotten used to MR being a safe space for (at least carefully formulated) racism; not remove those people, not warn them about what's suitable and not, and not simply block repeat offenders from commenting on "political" news. But to allow them; and then avoid discussions about Apple's work with black people and communities.

It doesn't exactly look good from the outside either; people coming here seeing how all black stories are treated differently.

Personally I wouldn't "support"/use a platform like this if I didn't feel that it's improving.

I just got this feeling, from recent discussions and changes, that some people here are waking up to what's been going on; and especially how it actually looks to in 2021 be running a website where black people and communities has become a bit of a banned subject (as far as discussions goes).

That's just my take on it, of course.