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What Happens When You Delete the Comments?
We are all online moderators now
Picture the scene: You have produced something and uploaded it into one of the internet’s content buckets. If it’s a video, that might be YouTube. If it’s an image, Instagram. If it’s some writing, it could be this very site. You might now get some likes or hearts or claps. On-screen is a tiny meter, measuring the warmth of one’s heart.
And then the comments roll in: “This is bad and you are bad and anyone who agrees with this is bad,” one might say, possibly less politely. Maybe the comment is insulting and aggressive. Perhaps it’s racist or sexist, trolling or flaming, looking for an argument, the digital version of shoulder-bumping someone, squaring up, and demanding: “What are you going to do about it?”
What do you do?
You have a few options:
- You can ignore it. Sticks and stones and all that.
- You can reply to it. Running the risk of feeding the trolls.
- You can report it to the platform. An act that feels like praying to the fickle internet gods to smite it with digital lightning.
- You can delete the comment (on some platforms). As the commenter is in your “digital house,” you can force them to leave.
- And there’s the nuclear option. You can delete your whole account, essentially turning over the table and walking out in a huff.
Technology has added nuance: disabling comments, blocking users (out of sight, out of mind), shadow banning (they can see their comments but no one else can), “greylisting” (slowing down the site for the misbehaving user). No matter how much technology changes, there is a common thread: people.
Deleting an abusive comment under your work has become a political act. Some might say this is tantamount to “deplatforming” or denying “free speech.” But moderators delete comments all the time. When something I write tips beyond a certain level of popularity, spam…
