On Thursday afternoon, Vox Media's technology site The Verge published a post by Adi Robertson that addressed the lack of veritable female characters in video games. Soon after publishing, the comment section of the article was flooded with comments attacking Robertson, some of which featured graphic and pornographic images.
Dieter Bohn, The Verge's executive editor, confirmed that the site's moderation team was hard at work trying to police the comment sections for graphic content.
"Our moderation team is working to remove them as quickly as possible and watching new comments closely," he said. "We've also instituted a 24 hour waiting period before new accounts can post comments — which may or may not be helpful, we'll see."
I wish the @verge had downvotes in comments. It makes my stomach churn seeing clearly anti-feminist comments, no matter how well written
Bohn added that these comments were only being spotted in Robertson's post from this afternoon and not across the site. He says that he is unsure about where the comments were coming from.
"As for where they're coming from, I imagine it's one or two people anonymizing themselves. It certainly doesn't seem like a coordinated campaign," he said.
Earlier this month, Gawker Media sites instituted a similar approval process for commenters after their sites' comment sections were flooded with "rape-gifs."
More ammunition for 'ban comments' crowd.