When the Obama admin­is­tra­tion embraced blogging, sans commenting, on the White House web­site there were a num­ber of detrac­tors say­ing that Obama had retreated from his cam­paign promise of pro­vid­ing a site enabling pub­lic dis­cus­sions. The rea­sons why are fairly obvi­ous, but Clive Thomp­son looks at how the WhiteHouse.gov blog could enable com­ment­ing and successfully/safely con­trol trolls (the orig­i­nal link is cur­rently 404. Google’s cache of the post is up).

If the White House were to use humans to fil­ter posts, it could get into some dicey polit­i­cal sit­u­a­tions. If it were to out­right ban them, it could draw First Amend­ment law­suits. So the genius of mod­ern troll-taming techniques—leaving trollery intact, but mit­i­gat­ing its impact—neatly fits the bill.