The Coast’s comment section is a place intended for civil debate, constructive discussion and for folks to share their own experiences. But it hasn’t been meeting those goals. The vast majority of comments on our website fall under personal attacks and intense arguments between commenters.
Given the potential of comments to be a force for good, we have resisted the media trend to turn commenting off completely. But it’s becoming increasingly clear that the small corrective steps we’ve taken over the years to try to keep things from getting, well, completely shitty haven’t quite done the trick. So we are making a big change: Any reader will have to connect using their Facebook identity in order to comment on Coast articles.
Until now, commenters have been able to sign up for an account at thecoast.ca simply by providing an email address and a name. Given how easy it is to get a “burner” email address and type somebody else’s name into a text field, these Coast-site accounts were essentially anonymous. Some—maybe even most—people used their real names and primary addresses for their commenting accounts, but a certain type of actively destructive commenter thrived on the potential for anonymity. With this change to Facebook-backed accounts, we are aiming to bleed that anonymity out of our system. Site-only email accounts will no longer exist, and current users will have to re-authenticate their accounts using their Facebook IDs.
The hope is that folks will be less likely to engage in vitriol with their real name and/or social media account attached to their comments. If we suspect a user is under a fake account, they will be banned immediately.
We understand this might be frustrating for some—especially those who don’t use social media—but we believe this change will ultimately be for the best. Other account accountability options like Twitter and Google may roll out in the future. We encourage you to continue engaging with The Coast via Love the Way We Bitch/Love (as always, it will remain anonymous to post a Bitch or Love) as well as through our Reply All section (which can be reached through letters@thecoast.ca).
This article appears in Mar 30 – Apr 5, 2017.
Awwww – are the ideological Chekists at Team Scroat getting triggered by all the nasty comments, or is it just getting more difficult to keep up with the ever-fluctuating definition of “Racist, Sexist & Homophobic” when deleting comments?
See Ya >: )
I don’t have a Facebook account, nor a Twitter account, Instagram account, snapchat account, etc… So I guess your answer to “bullying” on your website is to bully people to get social media accounts and open themselves up to actual bullying.
Lol
Peace, losers!!!
Bye!!!
Someone can set up a fake Facebook account just as easily… Not sure this will have the desired effect.
Neptunian: This is true. But it’s pretty easy for us to look up the profile and determine if it’s fake. It’s not a be all, end all solution, but I think it’s a start.
What’s ironic is that under the heading “latest in editorial”, right above the comments section for this thread, there is a story with the caption “To the trolls who would silence trans writers”, in which you cannot control what people post through Facebook, so you remove the article. So, there is proof that your policy of Facebook linked accounts does nothing in terms of hatred suppression, but you’re gonna take a whack at it anyway because you can always ban everyone with a different opinion anyway, right? Let’s protect people by giving them only one vector of thinking, right? How did that mentality work with news filters and the US election? Protecting people from the very real anger and hatred out there does nothing, and changes nothing. Protecting and influencing people by exclusion and selectively sourced articles used to be called propoganda, now it’s just called journalism.
So I must ask, Rebecca, what is your “be all, end all solution”? Is a fake Facebook account the same as you pretending to be interested in joining a men’s club to expose them for, well, being a men’s club? Then publicly harrassing them by calling them bigots, misogynists and racists, based on nothing but your opinion? That is the very definition of “trolling”.
Call, clap, clap… Another win for the “good guys/girls”, right? Cuz it’s different when “we” do it!!