• by Sara Guaglione , September 10, 2019

After purchasing The Coral Project in January, Vox Media is revamping the open source, comment moderation platform.

The company has renamed The Coral Project “Coral by Vox Media.” Its popular commenting platform Talk is now “Coral.” These are the first major changes to the platform since it was bought by the publisher earlier this year.

Vox Media also announced new Coral partners: Mother Jones, Los Angeles Times and the Financial Times.

“We believe community engagement is first and foremost a question of strategy before technology,” stated Andrew Losowsky, head of Coral. 

In addition to the commenting platform, Coral provides strategic consulting, newsroom training and online resources that help publishers engage their audience and build loyalty, “without relying on Facebook and Twitter,” Losowsky added.

A few years ago, publishers increasingly shut down the comments sections on their sites, which were often plagued by trolls and hateful comments. They directed readers to social media to engage with content. 

There is now a growing trend to get readers back onto owned-and-operated sites.

Coral’s existing clients include The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Intercept and New York Media, among others.

Founded in 2014 by Mozilla in collaboration with The New York Times and The Washington Post, Coral is used in more than 60 newsrooms in 13 countries. Publishers can integrate the technology into their own CMS. 

The new version is “a complete rewrite of the platform,” according to Vox Media, with changes based on feedback from the team and users. The platform is faster, with improved user experiences for both commenters and moderators, as well as new features and pricing.

The new features aim to prevent “trolls” from disrupting conversations. Journalists also will have additional tools and resources to facilitate safer and more engaging conversations on their sites, such as a filter that can monitor and hold back comments from people who are frequently submitting "problematic comments," according to Vox Media.

Publishers that use Coral own their audience data. The platform is ad-free and GDPR-compliant.

Coral integrates into Chorus, Vox Media’s audience and revenue platform for publishers, as part of its publishing tech stack.