In the 2010s, news publishers couldn’t shut their comment sections fast enough. The space “below the line” had become a noisy, thankless place to spend your time, where bile and bad faith arguments too often drowned out any genuine discussion or personal connection, or skewed the way readers thought about the journalism above.

Publishers saw comment sections as a reputational hazard and a cost centre and, by the middle of the decade, a dozen sites — including Popular Science, Chicago Sun-Times, Motherboard, Reuters, and NPR — had significantly reduced or completely disabled commenting features. Each argued, often without the data to back it up, that its readers preferred to discuss stories via social media. And so, what was once heralded as a new frontier of reader dialogue died a not-so-quiet death.

A decade on, something surprising is happening: reader comments are having a mini renaissance. After years of chasing social media engagement and being burned in the process, publishers have realised that commenting has a tangible value — to the broader public, yes, but also in terms of advertising and subscription revenue.