Abusive Comments, Blog Aggregators and Freedom of Speech

Just days before Friday’s plunge in General Electric (GE) shares, blogger Chris Marshall issued a warning on the conglomerate’s exposure to credit risk. It was picked up by SeekingAlpha.com, the leading aggregator of financial blogs. Shareholders and other GE bulls promptly inundated the comments section to his post with disparaging remarks. You can see the comments here or snippets in the Appendix below.

Now that GE has roiled shareholders and financial markets, the commentators are the ones not looking so good. You can see them reacting to the earnings miss here: it's not blood in the streets but there are plenty of chewed-up finger nails.

Marshall, who only recently started having his posts reproduced on the blog aggregator, may have been shocked by the severity of the response. But that kind of feedback is not unusual on the website, even for marquee bloggers like Barry Ritholtz. It seems online comment sections, especially when someone thinks your investments are overpriced, have a tendency to degenerate into personal attacks and attempts to intimidate or discredit.

This raises a question: should they be moderated in some way? Freedom of speech is preferable, of course, but the downside could be that bloggers may decide it’s just not worth having their posts copied to the aggregator.

In fact, I wonder if the unbridled feedback is one of the (unspoken) reasons Mr. Ritholtz recently suspended his connection with SeekingAlpha.com and wrote a post questioning the merits of affiliation. This post, by the way, has triggered an interesting discussion, with contributions from Felix Salmon, Joseph Weisenthal, and David Jackson, among others.

Appendix: Reactions to Marshall’s post

“What utter nonsense …. THE ONLY THING THAT'S OVERVALUED IS YOUR SALARY FOR WRITING TRASH LIKE THIS!!!! ….Your article is pure nonsense. What are you trying to do? Get it down so you can load up on the most stable, consistent company ever? … To say your comments are dimwitted would be an understatement …. “Hilarious, yet a bit worrysome (Sic) that people with such poor analytical skills can write articles on here …. This guy hasn't got a clue …. idiot's research … The person who wrote this nonsense should be barred from writing or commenting in any form on any stock if this garbage is what his "research" produced.”

Comments

[chrism1962]

Larry,

I think that it is important to let readers state their views, good or bad. If my analysis is correct, they will regret their comments. If my analysis is wrong, then some of the comments will be deserved.

The only point that is annoying, is when somebody says " trust me I'm a professional ", usually it is this type of person, who does not analyze anything, just goes with the flow from Wall St.

Most of my focus is on macro-economic overviews of the current market, which I believe is over priced. As EPS falls, so too should Corporate values. Generally, I look at at the Macro-economic Overview, followed by sector trends, followed by detailed corporate analysis. On many occasions I have been troubled by "Wall St analysts" not carrying out point Number 1.

Many analysts appear to study a sector, compare Company's, and then determine winners and losers. But this approach is flawed without looking at the macro-economic view, after all, in a probable recession, they may ALL be losers.

I also believe that listing your full research may be detrimental to the long term interests of your readers, you should have enough information to get your point of view across. If the readers are serious investors, they will analyse the companies themselves, which is the best way for them to learn.

Nobody is going to be correct all of the time, maybe I'm just luckier than others, but if you're correct most of the time, your portfolio will always perform well.

Thank you for your interest in the GE comments.

Best regards,

Chris Marshall

[SergeBirbrair]

"sticks and stones..." I am sure that the ones with disparaging comments wished they never made them. The proof is in the pudding,
Chris Marshall is obviously "the chef" and investors with poor attitudes are....just poorer investors.

[tjschoenlein]

One of the reasons I check in with this web site is usually it's devoid of moronic comments and personal " slicing and dicing ".

When I see these kinds of personal abuses I discount this persons views.. they carry zero weight with me.
The problem with filtering comments is who gets to do the filtering?
In the end we only see what the " filter " wants us to see.. not good. Lets hope that these folks become bored and move on.
...just a Missouri boys view.

[Bob Markman]

Hard hitting comment should be a part of any rigorous investment discussion. Even Ritholz would agree, as demonstrated by his breezy style on his own blog. Nevertheless, I'm tired of the infantiulization of our society and it's time we adults started acting like adults--especially on an investment site. I see nothing wrong with an ediotor using a reasonable screen to keep the adolescents out of the mix. Grow up and act/write like an adult. I, for one am tired of these blog versions of gangsta rap!

[SA EditorEli Hoffmann]

Thought I'd chime in here:

Seeking Alpha does have a policy of deleting abusive and inappropriate comments. Admittedly it's imperfect, and some bad comments make it through.

We are in the midst of developing a new comment abuse monitor that will allow contributors and readers flag abusive comments for immediate editorial perusal.

Doing it by hand, which is how we do most everything here, has its drawbacks. But with regard to comments, which are a particularly salient area of any website, we believe it's still the most equitable process of dealing with the problem. In the meantime, don't hesitate to bring inappropriate comments to our attention.

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