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What happened to the idea of having a comment section for each webpage?

3 points by posttoken ↗ HN
I've seen this idea attempted a few times over the years but it died every time. The idea is simple, it would be a browser extension that creates a comment section on the side. There could even be live chat. It could be page-URL specific or domain-specific. I think a few years ago when someone tried this it got banned from the Chrome Web Store. Why isn't this a thing?

11 comments

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throwitaway222
I long wanted to comment on Zillow listings obvious warnings:

Potential Buyers, the new owner bought this 1 month ago and raised the price $200k - there's no way 200k of work can go into this double wide shit dump unless they tore it down and rebuilt it in one month, which is not possible. Please don't buy this from this real estate terrorist

serengetti
if someone has money, they can buy an asset, mark up the price and resell it. how do you think walmart, or literally any other store make their money? that's called capitalism, if you don't like it, move to a socialist country, nobody is forcing you to participate in it.
serengetti
There even was an entire project Looking Glass in java around it, I thought it was years ahead of its time.
robertknight
Tools like https://web.hypothes.is exist and have a decent number of installs.

The hard part of a generic third-party commenting tool is creating the right social context for it to actually be useful. Hypothesis for example is mostly used via its integration into online learning platforms, where that context already exists.

dave4420
Website owners don’t want it.

Think about it: why would you put up with a comment section on your site, with you having no say on moderation decisions?

chrisjj
> Website owners don’t want it.

Who cares? It works independently.

serengetti
it's the same concept as google maps reviews. a restaurant may not want those comments or have any way of moderating them, but that's what helps to maintain good quality, at least in theory.