Mark Harris
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Outside of being home to hundreds of NFL rumors and a place where founder Mike Florio can regurgitate liberal political talking points, Pro Football Talk was known for it’s incredibly basic layout and rather spicy comment section.
The website introduced its new design on Monday, and with the facelift came the removal of the comment section.
Pro Football Talk is by no means the only often-visited sports website to get rid of its comment section, but Florio’s explanation as to why it is no more is certainly interesting.
READ: MIKE FLORIO IS UPSET NFL WON’T COMMENT ON ROE, CALLS ABORTION A ‘CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT’
According to him, all the toxic dialogue being had in the comment section simply needs to move over to social media. But do not fear, Florio is still a big First Amendment guy, but since his website isn’t a literal “town square” then free speech can be tossed aside.
“Relative to the entire readership of PFT, only a very small percentage posted comments on a regular basis. Far too many comments were, at times, far too hateful and toxic (especially many that were deleted by the moderators.) Given the prevalence of social media, there are many other ways for voices to be heard,” Florio wrote.
“You can easily interact with any of our items on Twitter or Facebook; nearly every story is posted on each platform. You also can email me directly, at florio@profootballtalk.com.”
“The First Amendment remains alive and well, and we fully support it. But PFT wasn’t and isn’t a town square. It’s an outlet for NFL news and opinion. There was a time that the interaction added to the experience. That time, in our assessment, has ended.”
The Pro Football Talk Twitter account is no stranger to receiving backlash, but with the removal of the comment section, their mentions may very well turn into a literal cesspool.
Wow blast from the past, I completely forgot that PFT existed… and going back to forgetting about it now
Oh goodie, Florio & King preparing for unfiltered & uninterrupted propaganda spewing of senile Joe & Libbie political support in 2024.
The dirty secret about Florio was that he censored comments that simply disagreed with his thesis. Even if a post contained zero vulgarity, personal attack, or other violation, he wouldn’t allow it if he felt it undermined his opinion. Florio is the exact opposite of free speech. He’s a fascist.
It also needs to be said that it wasn’t just a matter of deletion. He prescreened all posts, and wouldn’t allow comments to appear to begin with. People had to wait and wonder. In addition to that, he’d shut off the section when he’d go to bed, and wouldn’t allow any posts whatsoever until he got back in the chair in the morning.
All butt-kissing posts were allowed, particularly in relation to a laughable “book” that he self-published and constantly promoted in self-aggrandizing articles, but anything the thin-skinned lawyer felt contained even a whiff of implied criticism was verboten.
None of the other writers on PFT are allowed to have their own opinions. The staff are as bland and vanilla as possible, to navigate around Florio’s fragile ego. Once Florio states a view on something, the rest of employees must echo his opinion in their own posts.
The other writers aren’t even allowed to have a sense of humor, because Florio wants all the attention on himself and needs to feel he’s the entertainment king of the dung pile.
For most of the history, Florio didn’t have an African-American writer on the staff. No reader was allowed to make an innocuous comment such as, “I look forward to the existence of more diversity on sports websites.” Meanwhile, Florio was foaming at the lips about Kaepernick getting “blackballed” and other imagined racial issues. It wasn’t until Outkick pointed out the hypocrisy of Florio’s hiring policy that Florio did something. What did he do? He fired a white writer (Darin Gantt) and hired a black writer (Myles Simmons). Note that he only took action when called out publicly.
It galled Florio that he couldn’t control the Polldaddy voting. Someone would make a comment like, “Great article, Mike!” and it would receive 4 upvotes and 57 downvotes.
The guy defines “Little Man’s Disease” in its purest form.
Peter King wrote in his MMQB column [twenty years ago when I read it] that Al Saunders [then OC for the Chiefs and later Washington], ‘never ran the same play in a month.’
I sent King multiple emails with quotes from Chiefs players saying they only had ‘four or five running plays’ and ran them all in the first half then picked the two that were working the best and just ran them over and over again in the second half. This worked fine as those Chiefs had two HoFs [Willie Roaf and Wil Shields] on the line and plenty of other Pro Bowlers [Grunhard, Richardson, Gonzalez] blocking.
Point being, King was reporting something obviously even comically wrong. No response. Zip. The conclusion was pretty simple–Saunders was a good source for King and King wanted to make him look good. One hand washes the other. It had nothing to do with journalism or even fact.
I’m surprised it took them this long to censor any criticism that interferes with their manufactured narratives.
The stories of his hypocrisy are legion.
For instance, for years, he’s accused the NFL of performing a “news dump.” In other words, when there’s a bad or embarrassing news to distribute, the NFL dumps it on a Friday afternoon. That way, fewer people notice and it’s somewhat forgotten by the time Monday rolls around. According to Florio, it’s a sneaky and unethical way to deal with something.
So what does he do, himself? Three years ago, it was discovered (by Outkick) that the ever-preachy and super-woke Florio had his own history of homophobic and special-needs-phobic comments. He was forced to apologize. You know where this story is going. He dumped out the apology after hours on a Friday. Not only that, but he turned off the comment section for that particular article (something I’d never seen him do before) to minimize attention and eliminate discussion.
What a mensch.
Noboby does hypocrisy better than Marxists. ‘We aren’t removing your right to free speech or give us honest and immediate feedback about our content, we’re just refreshing and moving in a different direction. We appreciate you’re ‘engagement’ with our brand, blah, blah….’
Getting fired or going broke should be a pleasant surprise for the clowns who double down on groupthink!