Comments Policy

A lot of news sites turned off comments somewhere around 2016 because moderation got expensive and the conversations got nasty. We left them on because TECHi readers know things our writers don’t. A reporter covering Nvidia gets sharper after the comment from the GPU engineer who actually shipped Hopper. A piece on a small-cap miss gets richer when a working sell-side analyst weighs in.

So the goal is high-signal disagreement. The rules below exist to keep that possible.

• Add something — a fact, a counterargument, a personal experience, a link to a primary source. “Great article” is fine but doesn’t need to be public.
• Disagree with the argument, not the person. Say where the author is wrong; don’t question their intelligence or motives.
• Cite when you can. SEC filings, official press releases, and academic papers travel well. Twitter screenshots travel less well.
• Disclose conflicts. If you’re long the stock you’re defending, just say so. Most readers respect the candour.

This isn’t a legal list. It’s the moderation playbook.

• Personal attacks, slurs, doxxing, threats. Removed without warning. Repeat offenders are banned.
• Spam and self-promotion. Affiliate links, “follow me on X” drive-bys, and copy-paste promo for paid newsletters are deleted.
• Pump-and-dump or coordinated promotion. If a stock or token suddenly attracts identical-tone comments from new accounts, every one of them goes.
• Insider information. Don’t post material non-public information in a comment, even “just a rumour I heard.” If we suspect securities-law violations we’ll cooperate fully with regulators.
• Off-topic flame wars. We’re a markets and technology site. National politics belongs somewhere else.
• Harassment of other commenters or our authors. Repeated targeting of the same person across threads is a ban.
• Hate speech. No exceptions for “just asking questions.”

Editors and a small group of trusted volunteer moderators read flagged comments. We use lightweight AI tools (Perspective API for toxicity scoring, our own pattern matchers for spam) as a first filter, but a human makes the final call on every removal. We don’t mass-delete based on a machine score.

When a comment is removed, the author gets a notification with the rule that was broken. First removals are usually informational. Repeat issues escalate to a temporary suspension. Egregious behaviour skips straight to a permanent ban.

Comments we strongly disagree with stay. Comments calling our reporting wrong stay (and if they’re right, we publish a correction). Comments mocking our analyst takes stay, as long as they target the take and not the person.

A useful test: if a comment would be welcome at a serious dinner-party argument about markets, it’s welcome here. If it would get someone kicked out, it gets kicked off.

Email info@techi.com with the URL of the thread and a sentence about why you think the removal (or the ban) was unfair. A senior editor reviews appeals within five business days. We’ve reversed bans before — we’ll do it again when the case is good.

Comments under paid-tier TECHi analyst reports are open to subscribers of that analyst (and the analyst themselves) only. The same rules apply, but the bar for off-topic is lower — these are research conversations, not general forums. Analysts can pin, hide, or remove comments under their own reports; if you think an analyst is moderating in bad faith, write to info@techi.com and a TECHi editor will review.

Most comments policies on news sites are vague enough to permit anything and nothing simultaneously. We tried to write one that an actual reader could read, agree or disagree with, and predict from. If something here feels off — too restrictive, too lenient, missing — tell us at info@techi.com. The policy gets better when readers push on it.