Re: Kinja — that must be so frustrating. Have you ever let them know? I bet they’d appreciate the feedback.

On your other points, I think they’re both right — and about to become wrong. Legacy publishers are making significant investments on this front. The Washington Post, as an example, just launched a new commenting platform with moderation teed up by AI — moderators will save time because the system will put the most urgent comments in front of them rather than the most recent, and they’ll have an at-a-glance view of the user’s commenting history, etc. Granted —Amazon-owned WaPo, or the NYT which is also working on this, aren’t representative of the industry as a whole, but their influence will be felt.

As for Facebook — they’re becoming very aware of the issues with engagement as an end unto itself. I think we’re going to see some important (and sometimes bungled) moves that emphasize the quality of engagement versus the quantity. (FWIW, Google faced this too as they matured. Basing so much pagerank value on inbound links led to a world of crap content linking to other crap content to beat the algorithm. It began counting the quality of the reference as more weighty signal).

Thanks!