The Verge is turning off comments
What we’ve found lately is that the tone of our comments (and some of our commenters) is getting a little too aggressive and negative — a change that feels like it started with GamerGate and has steadily gotten worse ever since. It’s hard for us to do our best work in that environment, and it’s even harder for our staff to hang out with our audience and build the relationships that led to us having a great community in the first place.
This is something that isn’t just isolated to The Verge unfortunately. I’ve found the communities surrounding several of the Vox properties to be overly passionate about the things they’re covering recently.
When something as simple as a phone review can send people into such a state where verbal harassment or personal attacks against writers and other commenters seems okay, it’s time to take a step back.