The Daily Sceptic Has Hit One Million Comments Since 2020

Who would have thought six years ago that this website would attract a million comments, a milestone it reached last night? When Lockdown Sceptics was started in April 2020 it combined a very serious and urgent cause with some rather light-hearted subjects and reader involvement. The serious cause was of course the Covid panic in all its glory. Being a lockdown sceptic was at that time very much a minority viewpoint – almost seditious, and certainly not one which any of the mainstream media outlets would allow you to espouse.

As comments on the site quickly proliferated, Toby needed moderators to keep things vaguely in check. The volume of comments that were moderated at that time told us that many more people were sceptical when in a sympathetic forum than they were in more established media, or even among their friends.

The light-hearted subjects were the start of moderating in earnest – many comments on a huge range of topics which had been set by readers, far more comments on any given day than is the case now. I’m guessing hundreds of comments each day and about a dozen moderators to oversee it.

In among the serious cause, and alongside the LS team’s great efforts to persuade serious writers to provide material, the site carried sections like ‘Love in a Covid Climate’, which attempted to be some form of dating site. We also had ‘Postcards from around the World’, which if nothing else reminded the imprisoned masses that there was a much bigger world still out there, even if it was only available to those whom governments would allow to travel.

The moderating team was busy, keeping things reasonably clean, stopping Toby being slung into jail and generally encouraging everyone to ‘Question Everything’, ‘Stay Sane’ and ‘Live Free’.

After about 18 months we morphed into the Daily Sceptic, at which point Covid was still a primary focus, with the Net Zero scam and woke behaviour added later. The site had survived being a rebellious upstart and seemed to become a little more grown up; the volume of comments slimmed down a bit, and commenters’ behaviour by and large improved. And that trend has continued until the present.

We know some of you dislike moderators because we sit in judgement on what you write. That’s a very understandable and healthy line to take, given that the Free Speech Union is our sister ship. Some think the moderators run an Old Boys Club expressly for the purpose of sniping at female commenters, which is hogwash. And yet others thank us for the odd bit of help with spelling, grammar or technology. But mainly we hope that you don’t even notice our presence as moderators and certainly don’t feel that we are breathing down your neck. We try to exercise a light touch when reviewing your comments.

Very early on in the life of Lockdown Sceptics, Toby had come up with his admirably succinct editorial policy in relation to comments and it has served us well:

Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.

Have there been permanent bans? Yes. Our protocol is to engage with offenders, point out what we don’t like and why, warn them and then, if they take no notice, ban – a rare occurrence.

Have we given warnings which have been heeded? Yes, I’m pleased to say.

What is the hardest thing we have to moderate? Well, that would probably be whenever freedom of speech is invoked – it is precious to us too, but we are also looking over our shoulders at the reputation of the site.

We allow a lot of freedom, but unless we really have to, we don’t allow through words which will trigger algorithms that could lead to the site being banned by internet browsers or the daily newsletter being blocked by email servers.

For a long time before the DS became an accepted part of life and Toby became ennobled, we moderated words which could make us look like fringe Right-wing nut-jobs and thereby an easy target for the popular Press to ridicule.

Thanks to people like Frisby, Kisin, Pearson, Peterson and Murray, it is now much more difficult for the Thought Police to shut down Right-wing views and commentary. And hearing the Starmer anthem sung at football matches will forever represent the time when the people spoke truth to power without fear of 31-month prison sentences.

He really must be a w****r to think that banging Connolly up wouldn’t blow up in his face.

There is still far too much hate crime nonsense, cancellation and no-platforming, but at least our arguments can get published now.

Which subject produces the biggest demand for moderation? Almost certainly on the DS, it’s Palestine. The views are entrenched; commenters aren’t always split along Left-Right lines, so there are attacks from both sides. The language is as strong as the feelings. Toby is well known as a supporter of Israel and the subject just seems to light a blue touch paper.

Can moderators be bribed? Certainly; we have an account at Berry Bros & Rudd for just that purpose. I’d publish the account number if I thought the moderators would allow it…

A thank you to all our commenters for over six years of insight, argument, humour, support and mainly polite behaviour.