Facebook Comments: still a trap

The meme that Facebook Comments could be the saviour of newspapers’ troubled comments sections has emerged again.

I’ve expressed my scepticism about this path in the past. Matthew Ingram takes a more measured view:

In the long run, handing comments over to Facebook may increase traffic, but it could also make it easier for publishers to simply ignore their comments and not engage as much as they would have otherwise. Why should they, if Facebook is handling them? This is a little like a retailer outsourcing their customer service to an outside firm: it might take a frustrating element of the business off their plate, but it also hands control of a crucial element of customer interaction over to a third party.