{"id":142356,"date":"2015-10-15T11:37:22","date_gmt":"2015-10-15T09:37:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=142356"},"modified":"2015-10-15T12:26:40","modified_gmt":"2015-10-15T10:26:40","slug":"iol-closes-online-comments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/internet\/142356-iol-closes-online-comments.html","title":{"rendered":"IOL closes online comments"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Independent Online (IOL) says it will close comments on its online articles with immediate effect.<\/p>\n<p>It follows a similar announcement by News24 editor-in-chief Andrew Trench last month.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"byline\">Adrian Ephraim, IOL managing editor\u00a0<\/span>said in a\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.iol.co.za\/news\/dear-reader-we-re-closing-comments-1.1930349?utm_medium=twitter&amp;utm_source=dlvr.it#.Vh9vVGtGTwI\" target=\"_blank\">letter<\/a> on the group\u2019s website on Thursday (15 October) that instances of abuse in the comments section have become untenable.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Dear IOL reader, we need to talk \u2026<\/p>\n<p>I thought you should be the first to know that Independent Online (IOL) will be closing comments on its online articles with immediate effect.<\/p>\n<p>It is a difficult but necessary decision to make and we arrived at it after careful consideration of all the factors at play.<\/p>\n<p>The freedom of expression guaranteed by our Constitution was never meant to override the personal freedoms and human rights of our fellow citizens.<\/p>\n<p>Let me be clear that commenting on an article is not a right, but a courtesy afforded to you by IOL as a reader.<\/p>\n<p>If you are prone to being racist or sexist in your thinking, by all means express yourself on other platforms that may find such behaviour acceptable, but not on IOL.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><span class=\"byline\">Ephraim said that losing online comments is a crucial decision that could not be taken lightly, \u201cbut today we take the leap and put the interests of our loyal readers first\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>IOL said it will publish the public\u2019s opinion where it believes it is conducive to healthy debate.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFrom now on we will only tolerate meaningful contributions that take place with dignity, respect and clarity of though,\u201d the editor said.<\/p>\n<h3 class=\"my-4\">More on South Africa\u2019s media<\/h3>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/internet\/137706-news24-to-switch-off-comments-on-articles.html\">News24 to switch off comments on articles<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Independent Online says it will close comments on its online articles with immediate effect.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341006,"featured_media":142402,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[36,675,673,33398],"class_list":["post-142356","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-internet","tag-active","tag-iol","tag-news24","tag-online-comments"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142356"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341006"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=142356"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142356\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/142402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=142356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=142356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=142356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}