Pros and Cons, mostly Pros I spend a lot of my time arguing politics online. Yes, I realize that's pathetic. Anyway, OpenWeb is my favorite comment engine so far. The inline editing and ease of following the conversations are superior to both Disqus and LiveFyre. The email links bring you straight to the relevant comment and and open editing window so that you can write your reply quickly. Selecting text brings up a pop-up menu that allows you to change font effects (bold/italic, etc), which is much better than any existing product. My only complaint is that you can't write a reply email and have it automatically post to the site. That would obviously reduce traffic on the client website so it won't be implemented by any comment engine. ever. But it would be nice.

The subject was about political parties… The subject was about political parties and tariffs. I made the following comment "Did we learn nothing about tariffs with Herbert Hoover and the Great Depression." It was immediately rejected. No explanation, no vulgarity, no mention of current political candidates. More and more the AI or whatever they use is shutting down any intelligence discourse

OUTRAGEOUS AND ILL-JUDGED CENSORSHIP AOL News contained a piece about elderly people being alone and lonely at Christmas, and suggesting ways to help them. A response was posted that included an incomplete telephone number for Re-engage, who help such people. I posted the correct telephone number and my post was rejected. OpenWeb's bots would obviously prefer that elderly people remain lonely - obviously programmed by a very mean-spirited geek.

Banned by OpenWeb Unfortunately I wasn't given the option of giveing OpenWeb/AOL no stars. I've been banned from making comments on AOL by OpenWeb and I have no idea why. There was no notification. Their supposedly purpose is "to bring conversations back from social networks to publisher sites". But it's more like their purpose is to silence those they don't agree with. There's no way to contact OpenWeb and I did call AOL. But, they just said to file this issue on their feedback. I'm sure it went right into the bit bucket.

I'd give it a zero stars if I could I'd give it a zero stars if I could. I'm a regular on several different media outlets that use OpenWeb as their comments platform, and it's the worst I've ever seen. Nazis, Klanners, neo-Confederates, hate groups of all kind, and Russian propaganda trolls are their favored user base, and are allowed to post any racist, bigoted, hateful screed they want, 24/7/365 with near-total impunity, while anyone who speaks out against these Reich-wing trash can expect to be shadow-banned (OW's favorite tactic; apparently they're too stupid to realize that you can tell easily enough.) Basically, all the complaints here from Reich-wing "conservatives" is utter hogwash. Take a look at any place that uses OW and see. Try HuffPost for an example.