You need a subscription to read and comment on the FT website and the quality of the comments is still pretty bad there in my opinion.

I feel their quality is about the same of the comment section of a subreddit I disagree with, which is much better than any other online newspaper.

The FT do subscriptions for teams, so those commenters might not even be paying for it themselves. It could be paid for by their employer.

I could be wrong - I don't know if those accounts are able to comment or not.

So I happen to actually have such an account and there seems to be no difference to the normal subscriber account. However, commenting with this account means commenting with your corporate account. I would expect that people are more careful then, but it seems like this might not be the case.

Is this a separate subscription for commenting only? Perhaps this would work: an additional small fee for the possibility to add a comment? I don't know, probably this would also drive away people who comment sensibly.

[edit: rewrote a badly written subclause to be clearer than before]

The worst commenters have an agenda, so they will put down that fee as a "cost of doing business", like printing leaflets.

Your suggestion would address spam, but as major newspapers end up paywalled that's largely a non-issue. The others are moving to compulsory social login (e.g. FB) which also mitigates that (and basically makes you "pay" with your personal details).

Newspapers should totally have an easy feedback form, possibly even a dedicated forum, but not comments.

Point taken. I see now that my idea is a bad one. Moderation is really difficult.

> and basically makes you "pay" with your personal details

I believe the parent means that you pay/it hurts your wallet (even if it is $5 per year). When you "pay" via your facebook details being shared, then this cost doesn't affect you. If you cared you woulnd't be using FB in the first place :)

See also public groups/comments on Facebook itself: the realname convention makes most reasonable people self-censor to silence, leaving only the wildest nutcases posting (with rare exceptions in between). Even if you don't use your real name there, as long as you aren't on a dedicated spam account you'll still be connected to your real life network and that is enough for massive self-censoring to happen. Would your hn posts happen if they'd show up in the feeds of distant family? Mine surely would not, and that's while I try keeping hn posts to the highest quality tier of all my online interactions.

Pay to post is harsh on the consumer. Pay to prove you're not a spammer is better, because you get your money back.

I'm experimenting with a fix for this at repowcha. There's probably a cost threshold past which it becomes unprofitable to post bad comments with an agenda.

>There's probably a cost threshold past which it becomes unprofitable to post bad comments with an agenda.

I'm not trying to be snide, but I genuinely believe you are underestimating the overwhelming drive that is caused by spite.

Like advertising rates, different astroturfing campaigns will have different budgets.

Why pay to comment on site when someone can just repost it to social media and you can comment there for free?

It's a sweet idea, but I don't think it's at all in line with how people think/utilize comments sections.

Because you reach roughly the same audience as the original article with your comment when it's published directly below it, whereas your social media post is read by your contacts only unless it's exceedingly successful.

Why would anyone pay $5 a month subscription to a YouTube channel that is already free?

The idea of selling things online was never about how to sell them to people who don't want them. You're clearly not the target market. It would be for people who are so fiercely loyal they don't think twice about how nice of a bonus it is to be able to be in the select audience that CAN comment. I don't know if people are this loyal to publications, but I've certainly felt it towards YouTube personalities that align with my thinking so strongly that I feel supporting them is promoting my values.

> Why would anyone pay $5 a month subscription to a YouTube channel that is already free?

To support the content producer. Maybe $5 is too high, but what if it was $2 or $3? I pay that to a few producers.

It is, increasingly, at least in the Sports content world.

The Athletic, for example, has its own comment section (duplicated on a much larger scale by Reddit discussion of quotes from the paywalled articles). Even niche outlets like the Dunc'd On Podcast come with their own Discord.

The lure, I think, is basically what's being discussed here.

Sports discussion ... suffers perhaps more than average from an absence of moderation, so a paywalled community is seen as a benefit.