We want you to feel at home when you post a comment on OANN.com. We want everyone to feel at home posting comments on OANN.com. We don’t know what your home is like, but we know how we expect people to behave when they visit ours. That’s why we reserve the right to delete comments and ban users as needed to keep the comment threads here civil and substantive.
For reasons why your comment may not be published immediately, see the FAQ section below.
Our No. 1 house rule is simple: Don’t be a jerk.
Want to be the kind of commenter we’d love in our community? Here’s what we like to see in comments:
- Weigh in with smart, informed ideas that contribute further to the story.
- Give us useful, constructive criticism. Spot a typo or an error? Let us know and we will correct it.
- Demonstrate and share the intelligence, wisdom, and humor we know you possess.
- Don’t feed the trolls. Do not dive into a debate with the ill-informed. Downvote comments instead.
** Also, only flag comments that you come across as rude, abusive or in need of moderator intervention. DO NOT flag comments just because you do not agree with someone. Doing so unnecessarily will get YOU banned instead. Flagging is meant to report suspicious, harmful or rude activity. If you get into an argument with other commenters, welcome to the internet. Downvote the comment or block the user so you do not see comments from that account. **
Although we can’t be everywhere at once, here are some of the kinds of comments we’re going to do our best to curtail:
- Promoting your own brand, product, or blog. So you’ve got a climate change solution that will simultaneously solve world poverty. Great. Send it through our contact form.
- URLs and links. This is often considered spam, so to be safe we just don’t usually allow it.
- Impersonating authors or other commenters. We can’t believe we have to say this, but: Don’t do that.
- Comments that make it clear you didn’t read the article. Enraged that we didn’t mention X in a story about Y? If you’d made it past paragraph two, you’d see a very well thought-out discussion of that X you hold so dear.
- Comments that are completely out of left field. Sometimes discussions veer off a bit, but are still related to the original subject. That is fine. Hijacking the conversation to promote off-topic commentary is not.
- Threats — no matter how vague — against the author or other commenters. Things can get heated. Think before you casually mention your foe’s home address.
- Racism, sexism, homophobia, you get the drift. Call us the PC Police, fine, but don’t say we didn’t warn you if you are banned or deleted.
- Language. Filthy words are not just offensive. They’re boring. Be clever.
- Trolling. If you’re just out for a good trolling and are not contributing meaningfully to the conversation, we’ll be pushing you back under the bridge.
FAQ
Q. Do I need a Disqus account?
A. No, but it makes things go much faster.
Q. What does Disqus do with my information?
A. A Complete guide to Disqus’ terms and policies can be found here.
Q. Where is my comment?
A. Depends. Most of the time when you make a comment as a guest (meaning you haven’t signed up on Disqus), the comments sits in moderation until approved. Most comments that meet the required standards posted above are posted immediately when you are signed in.
Q. Why is my comment waiting for approval?
A. If you have a Disqus account, a comment may be waiting for approval because it was flagged by Disqus as failing to meet the requirements listed above. This may mean a word was flagged, a link, or maybe you posted a social security number.
Q. There was nothing wrong with my comment. Why is it waiting for approval?
A. Sometimes a comment gets held for moderation by mistake. If this happens, we usually see it and correct it as soon as possible. If you believe something was unapproved by mistake, feel free to contact us using our online form.
Q. Why are you censoring comments?
A. We are very transparent in what is and isn’t allowed on our forum. Any opinion is welcome here, but we do not tolerate hate speech, racism, bad language, etc. If you believe something was unapproved by mistake, feel free to contact us using our online form.
Q. Why can’t I post a link?
A. We try to create a space free of bots and spam. Hopefully you appreciate that. It is often hard to decipher what is a legitimate comment, so we have to eliminate links altogether. If you want to refer to an article, try something like “You can find proof of this statement by searching for John Doe’s article ‘Houston Astros’ on ESPNs website.”
Q. Why did I get banned?
A. There are a few reasons this could happen. Chances are you severely broke one of the rules above. Look over your previous comments and you will probably know exactly why your account was removed from our platform. More often, accounts are temporarily banned because of comments that were flagged although they were innocuous in nature.