Also, is the audience for their big conference, TechCrunch Disrupt, the same and the audience for their news coverage?
What do you think makes the Verge better in terms of comments? The content?
If I were guessing, I would think their conference would skew towards tech professionals. Their articles show up on news aggregator apps, like google news, that probably brings in a ton of non-tech or tech adjacent people.
I think its really hard to cultivate a good comment section. Its pretty low effort to make off hand emotive comments ("this is bad and you should feel bad" kind of comments). Negative engagement is the most engaging engagement, so any reaction to that can encourage that behavior.
I think through social norms that get reinforced with moderation helps discourage some of that. That leaves room for people to ask questions and create discussion about the ideas in the article.
This is an example of a comment thread on the verge that I thought was interesting. If you view the full discussion you will find a bunch of uninteresting emotive comments as well.
https://www.theverge.com/2024/12/10/24318259/gm-cruise-shutd...