Except for substack. In an interesting twist the comment sections on substack are thoughtful and polite with the authors chiming in -- at least in my experience. Don't know how to explain that compared to most sites. Maybe is because only paid subscribers are allowed to comment.
This is something I've seen with countless forums and message boards over the years, i.e. Quora, Yahoo Answers, etc.
1) Going mainstream / mass appeal means the lowest common denominator drops, whether that's content or quality of conversation
2) Commercialization incentivizes the wrong things - see Twitter and how its been optimised for "engagement" above all else (not quality of content, or user happiness etc).
Interesting things are happening at Clubhouse but surely they know how this will go. I think successful new platforms that want to maintain their integrity should be looking at paid membership. Substack might be OK because of that.
That's certainly not true for all substacks. Authors choose whether each post is paid-subscriber-only or not, and publicly visible posts can be commented on by unpaid accounts.
Maybe Substack comments are better because they represent a narrow audience (people interested in the output of a particular writer). Generally it is up to the author of the substack to moderate its comments.
Only because they are not moderated properly. Newspapers should simply have a staff member read and approve every post. It really doesn't take that long to read something and hit yes or no.
Nobody said the comments have to be real time.
You're talking about a lot of added cost for little added value. Newspapers aren't exactly swimming in money these days.
Newspapers aren't swimming in money because they don't go all in on online content. Moderating comments, choosing information for their readers, that's their core competence. Writing articles or printing is secondary.