What’s up with Yahoo!?
By Neglecting its Editing Responsibilities, the Company has
Fostered a Cauldron of Hate and Anarchy
Fostered a Cauldron of Hate and Anarchy
By Roger L. Kay
I find myself commenting on Yahoo! News, of all things. It’s useless. Every article has hundreds,
even thousands of comments, most of them totally odious. To even read them is to sink into a
mire of uncontrolled Internet.
But I can’t help myself. I read an article and start to try to predict the commenting, which direction it
will take, how the poisonous opposition will be cast. Tangents include spam, blatant ads for
services, and all manner of ad hominem claptrap.
I want to edit each one, respond to the insanity. So, I mark them thumbs up once in a while, but
mostly thumbs down, and even report certain of them as abuse or fraud. Yahoo! responds nicely,
with an automatic reply, and assures me that I won’t be hearing from a human being. They say
they study them in aggregate, but are closed mouthed about what it is that they learn. So, at
whatever flea like level, I register my discontent with the editors, such as they are, at Yahoo!
I wish I could veto egregious posts, though. It pains me that no one edits these forums. I get the
idea of maximum eyeballs, but a good editor could let in most and keep out a few based on sound
principles. A forum could follow rules such as: a comment doesn’t post if it has nothing to do with
the subject of an article, a rule so simple a machine could do it. After a bit of that sort of editing,
the human behavior on the other end might actually respond.
The New Yorker still practices a trademark brand of selectivity to set a particular tone. Some may
say too particular. A looser standard could easily apply to a more open forum. But racism, hate
speech, and bad behavior seem a little much, even for the open airwaves. With everyone an
Editor, no one is The Editor. We have chaos instead of an interesting forum.
As another example, literacy could be a minimum standard. But if an editor saw that a post was
well meant but badly put, he or she could fix it to make it do what its author intended.
I realize I’m just dreaming, that the spigot of the Internet is now an established fact, but I’m
nostalgic for the old days, when some sort of sense ruled. I find that it matters what people are
saying. The choruses are appalling. Waves of voices haunting a meme like anti-Semitism, or
calling for vengeful violence against women, foreigners, Muslims, liberals. Scary I don’t think
would be too strong a word to describe the rhetoric, mostly from the right. What do the twisted
faces behind those snarling words look like? I shudder to imagine.
So, editing might not be such a bad thing. It would keep the discourse civil, allowing different
points of view into the conversation, but not let idiots take over — and it would presume to know
what an idiot is. Far from creating an aristocracy of communications, a good edit could hold us all
to a higher standard.
It’s certainly worth a try. So, I file, “unfounded conclusion” or “hate speech; off topic” on Yahoo!’s
“report abuse” link, wearily tapping away at a corner of the flood. It’s like picking up trash on the
roadside near where you live. You do it because it pleases you, not because you can stop people
throwing things out their car window. The street just looks better, if only for a moment.
* * *
I take up the thread here several weeks later. One difference between before and after is that
Jared Loughner shot Gabrielle Giffords and others in the meantime. In the Yahoo! comment
forums, there was a lot of furious back and forth about whether Sarah Palin had anything to do
with the incident. A story posted on Yahoo! for only 36 minutes had, get this, 119,361 comments,
most of them typical of the genre.
And so I continue to edit, shoveling sand against the tide. I can’t help myself — category:
derogatory speech; specific: homophobic — category: derogatory speech; specific: racist —
category: other; specific: not relevant to the topic. And so on. Just a few on the first page, which
carries the most recent. It’s a symbolic gesture.
I don’t often have strong opinions, but in this case I do. Yahoo! should remove its commenting
function, at least temporarily, and make a public statement about the misuse of the feature. The
company should say that, given the volume of these comments, the forum cannot be moderated,
but that consistent bad manners, hate speech, and ad hominem attacks cannot be tolerated.
Therefore, the commenting function is suspended for the foreseeable future. The company can
inform the public that at some point commenting will be resurrected, but that it will be moderated
and that guidelines for civility will be posted prominently.
I tried to engage Yahoo! on this subject, but you can be sure it is a conversation they are not
anxious to have. So, I take to the blogosphere directly in the hope of getting a meme started.
Yahoo! has a responsibility to get this right.
© 2011 Endpoint Technologies Associates, Inc. All rights reserved.
even thousands of comments, most of them totally odious. To even read them is to sink into a
mire of uncontrolled Internet.
But I can’t help myself. I read an article and start to try to predict the commenting, which direction it
will take, how the poisonous opposition will be cast. Tangents include spam, blatant ads for
services, and all manner of ad hominem claptrap.
I want to edit each one, respond to the insanity. So, I mark them thumbs up once in a while, but
mostly thumbs down, and even report certain of them as abuse or fraud. Yahoo! responds nicely,
with an automatic reply, and assures me that I won’t be hearing from a human being. They say
they study them in aggregate, but are closed mouthed about what it is that they learn. So, at
whatever flea like level, I register my discontent with the editors, such as they are, at Yahoo!
I wish I could veto egregious posts, though. It pains me that no one edits these forums. I get the
idea of maximum eyeballs, but a good editor could let in most and keep out a few based on sound
principles. A forum could follow rules such as: a comment doesn’t post if it has nothing to do with
the subject of an article, a rule so simple a machine could do it. After a bit of that sort of editing,
the human behavior on the other end might actually respond.
The New Yorker still practices a trademark brand of selectivity to set a particular tone. Some may
say too particular. A looser standard could easily apply to a more open forum. But racism, hate
speech, and bad behavior seem a little much, even for the open airwaves. With everyone an
Editor, no one is The Editor. We have chaos instead of an interesting forum.
As another example, literacy could be a minimum standard. But if an editor saw that a post was
well meant but badly put, he or she could fix it to make it do what its author intended.
I realize I’m just dreaming, that the spigot of the Internet is now an established fact, but I’m
nostalgic for the old days, when some sort of sense ruled. I find that it matters what people are
saying. The choruses are appalling. Waves of voices haunting a meme like anti-Semitism, or
calling for vengeful violence against women, foreigners, Muslims, liberals. Scary I don’t think
would be too strong a word to describe the rhetoric, mostly from the right. What do the twisted
faces behind those snarling words look like? I shudder to imagine.
So, editing might not be such a bad thing. It would keep the discourse civil, allowing different
points of view into the conversation, but not let idiots take over — and it would presume to know
what an idiot is. Far from creating an aristocracy of communications, a good edit could hold us all
to a higher standard.
It’s certainly worth a try. So, I file, “unfounded conclusion” or “hate speech; off topic” on Yahoo!’s
“report abuse” link, wearily tapping away at a corner of the flood. It’s like picking up trash on the
roadside near where you live. You do it because it pleases you, not because you can stop people
throwing things out their car window. The street just looks better, if only for a moment.
* * *
I take up the thread here several weeks later. One difference between before and after is that
Jared Loughner shot Gabrielle Giffords and others in the meantime. In the Yahoo! comment
forums, there was a lot of furious back and forth about whether Sarah Palin had anything to do
with the incident. A story posted on Yahoo! for only 36 minutes had, get this, 119,361 comments,
most of them typical of the genre.
And so I continue to edit, shoveling sand against the tide. I can’t help myself — category:
derogatory speech; specific: homophobic — category: derogatory speech; specific: racist —
category: other; specific: not relevant to the topic. And so on. Just a few on the first page, which
carries the most recent. It’s a symbolic gesture.
I don’t often have strong opinions, but in this case I do. Yahoo! should remove its commenting
function, at least temporarily, and make a public statement about the misuse of the feature. The
company should say that, given the volume of these comments, the forum cannot be moderated,
but that consistent bad manners, hate speech, and ad hominem attacks cannot be tolerated.
Therefore, the commenting function is suspended for the foreseeable future. The company can
inform the public that at some point commenting will be resurrected, but that it will be moderated
and that guidelines for civility will be posted prominently.
I tried to engage Yahoo! on this subject, but you can be sure it is a conversation they are not
anxious to have. So, I take to the blogosphere directly in the hope of getting a meme started.
Yahoo! has a responsibility to get this right.
© 2011 Endpoint Technologies Associates, Inc. All rights reserved.
They Need to Step Up
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