Irish Times website no longer allowing comments

At the time it was being invaded. At war is a bit of misnomer.

Independent thinkers? Most of the people who describe themselves as independent thinkers are just regurgitating stuff they read on right-wing media.

Excellent description!

Bringing it back to the Irish Times comments section - I found that, although those people are a small minority, they were grossly over-represented in those comments - which is why I don't mourn for their demise.

Actually your description reminds me of a similar one in a book I read recently. This was by the founder of the OSINT organisation Belingcat when describing what he called the Counterfactual Community:

I am relatively new to the Irish Times. I am Irish born but have lived most of my life outside my country to which I am still attached. I came to the Irish Times looking for serious reading. But I have been taken aback by the fact that I cannot comment. Most publications I have frequented allow comments. Many of the postings here agree with this form of censorship, saying that your Irish man on the street is an ignoramus that must be controlled.

Having lived for extended periods in Spain, Italy, USA, and Mexico, I do not agree with some of the stuff published by this paper, and feel I am being controlled by the editors or whoever.

The Irish Times writers are like a privileged class that cannot be questioned. I would even go as far as to say they "pontificate" and there is no forum to question them or to disagree -despite the fact they are just as opinionated as any Tom, Dick, and Harry.

The line of The Irish Times is to constantly criticize and rail against the Catholic Church for being such an authoritarian institution for so long. But isn't being authoritarian too?

I am disappointed. Must I seek freedom of expression and A WAY TO PARTICIPATE somewhere else? Any suggestions?

My suggestion is to just stop reading it if it bothers you that much.

The problem is worse - the IT shut down a fully functioning comment facility and made a false promise to provide a new system.

As you can see there are posters here who think the IT is above criticism because you don’t have to read it. And, truth be told, the level of comments previously on the IT wasn’t much higher.

But I don’t believe that was why the IT ditched the system. My guess is some of their most prominent columnists didn’t like it when the online comments undercut their argument.

And some posters here have re-defined censorship to mean only “censorship by the State or Church” because they can’t face the reality that, in shutting down their comments section, the IT was behaving much like the Catholic Church of old. Except for the burning at the stake part. That’s only metaphorically now.

I shall sharpen my quill and dispatch a courier post-haste to D’Olier Street in hopes that my missive may find favour there.

Or I’ll just ignore the nonsense that passes for received wisdom in its pages. Either way, cancelling the online comments is a form of censorship and making a false promise shows the double-standards in the IT.

How about this for hypocrisy layered on self-deception from the Editor.

As other posters have said the masses are very lead by social media this days and only push the latest bandwagon. The DCC and the Ukraine flags etc. I the Ukraine got invaded in 2014 yet there was no flags then. But last year suddenly it was all the rage. There is no sincerity in the whole thing to me.

But that seems to be the world me live in now people are falling over themselves to care about the 'latest' cause before they move on to something else.

I think it could be argued that the IT getting rid of comments they have more control of the narrative, but there is always the chance something defamatory slips through and the IT have legal action facing them.

Looking at various media outlets many don't have comments on articles Irish Independent, Irish Examiner, Guardian UK. But the Daily Mail UK does still have a comment page, it attracts a certain type and certain narrative that the paper drives. I have come the conclusion that the Daily Mail has taken the decision that a comment page is likely to lead to more clicks, more views, more money. The same with the Journal.ie. It is all about quanity not quality - and clicks

There is one proper solution to the wild west of social media though, the same route facebook has taken. Verified accounts using ID passports etc and real names. But would the Irish Times be bothered with that? They are then into more difficulty with GDPR data storage and so on. Plus isn't the IT supposed to be the 'paper of record' a paper with a certain gravitas and quality? One for the discerning reader? I am sure their subscription model only targets a demographic? So why bother lowering themselves to something as base as a comment section?

So you don’t believe Twitter or X or any social media platform can censor speech?

Or do words just mean what you want them to mean?