&gt; I try my best to avoid those sites now -- they don&#x27;t want you to engage.<p>In my humble experience, some sites with comment sections also don&#x27;t want you to engage if you&#x27;re not on their side. And I think that&#x27;s more problematic, especially on news sites, because you could get the impression that the comment section was representative of the readers.<p>Just as an anecdotal example, a couple months ago, I tried engaging in a discussion in the comment section at welt.de, online outlet of one of Germany&#x27;s largest newspapers.<p>My comments were all short, on-topic, and never personal. I provided some sources but generally a different point-of-view than the (until then few) other comments, all right-wing barroom clichés, even celebrations of refugees drowning.<p>None of my comments was cleared, while very vile and unfounded comments continued to pour in.<p>I tested for a while and experinced the same behaviour on almost all newspaper websites. (On some others, I was immediately  attacked personally for my opinion, and that is with moderation in place.)<p>I since blocked disqus and never looked back. Twitter has been a good alternative for me so far.