I used to advise all aspiring bloggers to add comments sections to their websites, as I was once of the firm opinion that blogs need to facilitate two-way discourse. This was an opinion grounded in my (admittedly rose-tinted) experiences with the early internet. Forums, guestbooks, and comments sections were foundational to my utopian understanding of the internet as a place to freely converse and share information with others. Up until recently, the idea of not permitting visitors to add comments to a blog of mine would have been blasphemous.

I’ve had to re-evaluate my stance on comments sections over the last five years or so, because the internet itself has changed dramatically during that timeframe – to the point where I barely even recognize it. When people ask me now if I think they should add a comments section to their blog, my response is usually “only if you absolutely want one, and are prepared to deal with the potential consequences of having one.”

To that end, here’s why I personally decided against adding a comments section to this blog when I built it:

Privacy Policies are Frustrating to Maintain

When the internet was still a novelty, the legal ramifications of data collection were about the last thing on my mind. None of my websites in the early 2000s (or even the 2010s) had privacy policies, and I certainly wasn’t alone in that regard. They simply weren’t “necessary” for the average web-developing netizen at that time.

Of course, large corporate entities had to go and fuck that up for all of us by abusing public trust and data en masse, leading to the (increasingly extreme) data privacy laws in existence today. I’m not a privacy lawyer, and I’m certainly not interested in paying for any of the expensive privacy-oriented web services that have popped up (see what I did there?) in recent years to ensure GDPR compliance, so I try to keep things painless for myself by minimizing data collection on this site as much as possible. If I don’t allow visitors to add comments to my blog, I simply have much less to worry about as far as privacy goes.

I can already anticipate what some readers might say in response to this particular concern: how likely is it that someone out there would report a non-commercial personal website to data protection entities, simply because the webmaster failed to exhaustively disclose how comment data is collected and used via their privacy policy? Not very likely, agreed. I’m the sort of person who tends to dwell on the worst-case scenario, however, so I feel like I have to at least entertain that possibility – however unlikely it may be.

Also, I don’t actually want to have access to anyone’s user data. I don’t want to store any identifiable information that malicious actors could use for nefarious purposes if they were to ever somehow gain access to it. I’d much rather have my visitors reach out to me beyond the legal confines of my website, and in so doing offload any of the responsibilities associated with data protection to platforms that can actually afford legal representation. If, for instance, Bluesky fucks up and accidentally exposes the IP addresses or emails of anyone who has interacted with me on that platform, that’s on Bluesky. I can’t be held accountable for user data I can’t personally see and don’t control.

Spambots are Difficult to Squash

Back when I used to build SEO-focused WordPress blogs, the fight against spambots was a constant struggle. I had Akismet, I had those godawful CAPTCHAs on my forms … all they did was make my blogs less pleasant for humans to use, and gave me more irritating crap to micromanage.

You’d think that a small personal website like this one would barely register on the average bot’s radar, but the thousands of hits I get every week for my non-existent /wp-admin/ directory would suggest otherwise. I have no doubt that if I had comments enabled here, I’d be cleaning up copious amounts of LLM-generated spambot detritus on the regular.

Like many people, I first started having issues with social media during the pandemic. When I wasn’t burning out at work, I was spending unhealthy amounts of time “engaging” with strangers in comments sections everywhere. I feel like that experience messed with my brain a bit, because when I returned to blogging on WordPress (and later Substack), I felt incredible amounts of pressure to write posts that I knew would get people talking. If my posts didn’t generate a satisfactory number of comments, “likes,” and reshares, I felt like I’d wasted everyone’s time by uploading “bad,” unengaging writing to the internet.

I recognize in retrospect, of course, that this is a very silly, very “influencer-esque” sort of mindset to have; comments on blog posts are not a measure of quality, and never have been. Even so, that pressure to write “comment-worthy” posts remains for me as long as I can see a comments section at the bottom of the page. Easiest way to resolve the problem for me? Remove the comments section entirely.

I’m Sick of “Reply Guys”

If you don’t know what “reply guys” are and have never been on the receiving end of their unwanted attention, you can consider yourself extremely fortunate. Reply guys are one of the worst sub-breeds of internet troll, and comments sections are the bridges under which they reside. When called out on their behaviour, they tend to hide behind the disingenuous defense of “just wanting to have a debate.”

I enjoy a good, intelligent, respectful debate as much as the next person; what I don’t enjoy is having to deal with individuals who think that “having a debate” means “harrassing people on the internet relentlessly to prove them wrong and/or to try to neg them into a relationship.” For various technical reasons, it’s a lot harder to mute reply guys on static websites than it is to mute them on social media platforms … so my solution is to simply collapse their bridge from the get-go and deny them the opportunity to engage in their bullshit.

Why Not Use Webmentions or Provide an Email Address, Then?

Good question! See Wouter Groeneveld’s excellent blog post explaining why he no longer uses Webmentions on his site; I agree with his concerns completely. Furthermore, the process of setting up Webmentions on a static website like this one looks a little too complicated for a hobbyist like me. I could probably figure it out, but is it really worth the headache, given the drawbacks mentioned by Wouter? For me, that’ll be a resounding “no.”

As for email … I once listed my email address on an old WordPress blog of mine, and ended up being sexually harrassed by a cyberstalker for months – presumably because the “intimacy” of a one-on-one conversation via email emboldened this individual to say things he might not have said in a public forum. Blocking his email address and refusing to engage with him solved nothing, as he simply bombarded me with emails from new accounts. To put an end to the constant harrassment, I had to delete my email address, shut down the entire website, and start using a pseudonym. It was a terrifying experience that I’d rather not risk reliving, so my address will never be made public on any website of mine ever again.

In an ideal world filled with ideal people posting an ideal internet, I would still have a comments section on my website to make life easier for those of you who want to have a conversation about something I’ve written. Alas, the links I provide to my Fediverse profiles will just have to suffice.

Building a website without a comments section has been incredibly freeing for me, and I wish I’d thought to do it sooner; it would have spared me an awful lot of frustration over the years. I still receive thoughtful feedback on my blog posts wherever I link to my writing (my sincere thanks to you all), so I don’t actually feel like I’ve lost anything by ditching my comments section. Indeed, I’d say I’ve gained far more on the whole by prioritizing my own time and well-being over what is essentially a “convenience” feature for my visitors.