Can't Comment No More

You get news on the Internet, you get comments. Some share the same thoughts of the article or video. Others may not. A specific group will hate, no matter what. I think Yahoo is in a really bad spot considering that they just suspended comments on all of their news pieces if you even want to call them news. Of course, it's mixed thoughts and reactions.

When I look at Yahoo, I look at a group that has lost its focus since being bought by Verizon back in 2016. You see the same stories regarding the same celebrities they bring up. They link to other sites for some of their news pieces. One or two other things and you get a mess of a site. I do think this has to do with their political pieces, but I also believe this has to do with issues on tons of their pieces going back to the last ten years or so.

Long ago, the late Chris Chase wrote tons of sports stuff for the site. But it wasn't your typical material writers make. These got attention, usually for the wrong reasons. Very visceral from commenters. Honestly, he was average at best, mediocre at worst. Even with reasons like that for being overdue or not, the big thing is that we three and a half months away from the 2020 US election. A lot of Yahoo's stories are skewed a bit towards the left and possibly they don't want to deal with the influx of comments that could call out their point of views. Not to mention parts that look like they were written like a grade school kid's English test.

Yahoo is saying that they want to make the site a more safer experience. I don't think that is going to suffice as plenty of sites deal with comments all the time. They could be wimping out. And the ones flipping out about the suspension of it, that's what it is. A suspension. It could get reviewed and things go back to normal in a week or a month or however long. They aren't banning it completely. My thought is the site is trying to protect themselves. Some of it is justified and some of it isn't.

This is a murky thing, and political stuff aside, comments is not a fully required part of a website. That's what I'll end with. But it's far from being finished.

Thoughts of Yahoo at 25

It never occurred to me that last week marked 25 years since the debut of the site Yahoo. There have been changes over the years that I can see the difference between what it was like in the 2000s and what it is today.

I don't remember much until around 2004 or 2005 when going to the Yahooligans section, which was for kids. There was also the games section. It's where I got to enjoy playing Collapse for the first time. Other first time games include Rocket Mania (underrated flash game), Dynomite, and a few other games. Their pool game was one anyone could get into, one that my own dad got hooked onto back then. And beyond the flash games, it was home to what I used for email. I never used AOL or anything at that time.

There was such a huge focus on trying to get everyone into Yahoo. Appeal for everyone. You don't see that now. They got bought out by Verizon in 2016 and it's a different kind of site. More focus on celebrity stories. A lot more bias when doing politics. Writers who don't know how to make articles, which even in the 2000s wasn't good either. I remember nobody liking the sports guy Chris Chase, who was a horrible sportswriter. But all that aside of him, lots of articles felt like clickbait or had a link to go to the site they pulled a story from. I'd like to see what could happen today because I know they haven't made huge money in a long time. They tried many things and it hasn't helped.

Yahoo isn't what it used to be. The perils of hell considering Verizon wants to dictate what people see. But what website or conglomerate doesn't? Those joys of the 2000s will never be reached again.