It is done on article topics experience has shown tend to create a lot of work for the moderators.
Said another way, the it has been shown by experience that (some) MR forums posters can't behave in a civil enough way and stick to the TOS of the site thus creating additional workload for the moderators.
It doesn’t surprise me at all that you would say this.
A far more likely reason for "comments disabled" is that moderating at scale is difficult at best, impossible at worst. At the time of this post MR has 1,096,755 registered users, certainly not all of these are active but when dealing with this many users any topic has the capability to go off the rails. I find that MR is usually very quick to reign in bad actors or threads gone awry but again at scale I am sure they cannot meet everyone's moderation expectations, nor should they.
Perhaps the structure and organization of the staff is inadequate and instead of shutting down threads, they address the root cause?
We hear that excuse time and time again. Maybe it is time for the site owner to invest in proper moderation rather than turn out the same excuse 'it was disabled because it creates too much work for the moderators'.
There is a difference between more moderation and better moderation.
I hear you, but running any business is exhausting. That doesn't excuse MR from creating an atmosphere where "it is too much work" to allow your users to discuss Apple things related to International Women's Day, for goodness sake. 🤣 I've been here a long, long time and have watched the moderation go downhill as the site got bigger and bigger. I think @maflynn has it right when he says that he believes the site is still being run like a small business instead of what it is now. And he is in a better position than both of us to know that.
I respectively disagree with that line of yours because every private online site has censorship but instead of being referred to as censorship, it's more common use name is 'rules'. MR is no different, you have rules that prevent members from discussing certain topics or use certain words. It does not matter how bad the words are, you do not allow them to be used, hence censorship. I totally understand why certain words or certain topics are not allowed to be used in here but at the end of the day it's still comes under censorship. You have decided what is and is not allowed and that's censorship. Call it what ever you will, rules, terms and conditions but it is still censorship.
Yes, article 10 protects free speech but the definition censorship is usually associated with words or pictures deemed offensive although everybody may have their own unique definition.
Yes, you are correct. No matter how you slice it, its censorship - I posted the definition since people seem hung up on what is and isn't censorship. MacRumors is suppressing and prohibiting content they find unacceptable. They define specifics on various content and when that is violated the post is removed.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but there's no rules being violated with the news story Apple's Communication Safety Feature for Children Expanding to 6 New Countries
