Is comment free? New Polis research report on the moderation of online news

Why do we moderate websites? If you are Paul Staines who runs the hugely popular Guido Fawkes website then you interfere as little as possible. If you are The Guardian, for example, you have a whole team dedicated to editing comments. As a reader you pays your money (or rather you don’t because it’s online) and you makes your choice. But the decisions made about moderation matter because news websites are increasingly where we go to debate the issues. They influence opinion among journalists, politicians and the public. So is comment free?