Last month, Laas Leivat wrote a
thoughtful article about the hateful anonymous commenters that spoil the comment sections of online publications and followed it up last week with
another article about the anger in the Toronto Estonian community and its aftermath. I had been meaning to write about this topic for some time, but Laas has given me a reason to publish this long delayed article.
The question for any news website, whether it is the New York Times or EWR, is how much freedom should the publisher give to commenters. At one extreme, you maximize freedom of speech. At the other, you maximize censorship and control.
The good news for our community is that the number of truly malicious commenters is very small, they can be counted with the fingers of one hand. A common tactic employed by these aggressive commenters or trolls is to write multiple comments in one article, but under different pseudonyms. Since the system automatically flags all comments from the same network address, slightly more savvy users attempt to circumvent this by using various technical means. This will obviously result in giving their viewpoint the illusion that it is more popular than it really is. At the same time, all commentators are still automatically tracked internally by other means and the real people behind this nastiness are usually known to me in real life.
I have sometimes wondered what makes these people, who I know in their real life to be fairly reasonable, behave this way anonymously. I can only guess that some hold personal grudges against specific organizations or their board members, but perhaps some just enjoy fanning the flames for no reason.
Since the number of trolls is exceedingly small, EWR has employed a simple post-moderation in the past, removing comments based on complaints or by using its simple and always visible comment policy. However, for several months now, we have been more actively using pre-moderation policy for ‘flagged users’ or trolls before their commentary is published. The worst comments are never seen by readers. Some of these comments are so inflammatory that they could even be considered defamatory against identified members of the Toronto Estonian community. Such comments are invariably made anonymously. This approval process should not be confused by censorship, as anonymous online trolls do not enjoy any rights or privileges at all.
Various other online publications have employed different policies, many still allow anonymous comments without moderation, while others employ post-moderation or require registration that would make commentators easier to track and ban and presumably hold them accountable. Some publications do not allow any online comments at all.
So the obvious question is that why does EWR allow anonymous comments at all, why not just close this part of the website altogether? The life of the EWR moderator would certainly become much simpler.
However, allowing people to comment anonymously opens the discourse up to people who may fear negative consequences from other members of the community, employers, or even family members. Removing the right to post anonymously increases the pressures people feel to conform, and thus limits the extent to which they can speak freely. EWR is the only online facility open to Toronto Estonians that allows this freedom. Criticizing public figures in their official capacity, anonymously or otherwise, is healthy for democracy.
Another reason for allowing anonymous commentary is privacy. People should be able to comment without giving away any personal information, because they have a right to keep that information private. Taking away anonymous posting would be taking away this privacy.
In summary, I want to let our readers know that battling comment section trolls on EWR is an ongoing process that continues to evolve. However, as I stated above, the Toronto Estonian community should be happy that almost all of the offensive comments they see have been created by a handful of bad apples.
