Yeah, but that's why it's a switch, and these features are defaulted to "enabled".

Nothing wrong there. We need these switches. Taking them away is a bad, BAD idea.

If the discussion were about how to provide access to these settings in a cleaner manner, so that people understand why they exist, and how to properly use them, I'm all for that. Increasing awareness and informing people about what the internet does, how it all works, and why they should care is a good idea.

This article doesn't take that tone. It just says "Ew, yucky! Hide all these settings because they're ugly, or better yet, don't make them settings. Don't even let people change them. It doesn't matter how practical they are. They keep us from making money. The ivory tower, where all the developers live, will be able to figure out a way around the road blocks we put up as they usually do."

Messaging is more of an 'app' thing than a website thing. Comments not working just makes me call it one of the minority of badly-coded sites. There is absolutely no need for scripting just to have comments.