Vice also doesn't have comments [0] on their articles. What other big venues do this (NPR, Atlantic, NJ.com are listed in the Inquirer article)? Or I guess many just embed Facebook comments or some other outside network and consider it someone else's problem?
That said, this doesn't seem to be the norm yet. A number of news sites I frequent try to solve this by hiding the comments section by default. NYT sometimes hides comments on articles posted on weekends when they have fewer content moderators available, they say. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/27/reader-center/comments-mo...
[0] https://www.vice.com/en/article/vvdjjy/were-getting-rid-of-c...