I don't buy the "troll" argument. Every site has low-value comments and people either ignore them or down-vote them. They're not an issue. Take YouTube for example - they are known to have a cancerous comment section with little-to-no moderation, yet people don't avoid YouTube, they just avoid reading the comments on most channels.

The real problem for VICE is when comments aren't from trolls - when they're debunking the article and pointing out flaws in real-time.

That being said, I'm happy to see them disable comments. This will open up an opportunity for someone else to take over managing comments on their content... Hopefully someone who cares more about open discussion.