The publishing industry has discovered a thrilling new buzzword: participation. Apparently, after decades of persuading people to read articles, the next revolutionary step is persuading them to argue beneath them. According to the new gospel, publishers should transform their dignified newsrooms into bustling community plazas where readers gather daily to debate geopolitics, climate science and celebrity divorces with the intellectual rigour usually found in a WhatsApp group.This is being marketed as a “moat.” Which is a charming metaphor, because historically moats were filled with crocodiles and used to keep people out.The idea is simple. Social media platforms have become chaotic, toxic and algorithmically unhinged. Therefore, publishers, those famously patient moderators of human behaviour, recreate social media inside their own websites, but nicer. Imagine the comment section, that ancient digital landfill, reborn as a thriving civic forum where readers exchange thoughtful ideas under the gentle supervision of overworked community managers armed with the digital equivalent of mosquito repellent.What could possibly go wrong? The theory behind this movement rests on a familiar lament: publishers have been “renting” audiences from platforms like Facebook, Google, etc. Platforms took the traffic, the data and the advertising money while publishers were left clutching their investigative journalism like landlords whose tenants had moved into someone else’s house.The solution is to bring readers “home” and build communities on publisher-owned platforms. This sounds noble until one remembers a small historical detail: publishers already tried this. It was called the comment section.For roughly 20 years, publishers enthusiastically hosted “participation.” Readers participated by insulting each other, accusing journalists of conspiracies, and occasionally posting recipes or cryptocurrency schemes. Moderating these communities proved so exhausting that many publishers eventually turned comments off entirely. The dream of civic dialogue had collided with the reality of the internet: humans.Now the same industry is proposing to rebuild this experiment with better branding and slightly more sophisticated software. The underlying assumption is that audiences are eager to engage with journalists and each other. In reality, audiences are mostly eager to scroll while waiting for coffee. Participation sounds empowering in a conference presentation, but for the average reader it is work. Writing thoughtful comments requires effort, attention and emotional stability… three resources in notoriously short supply online.This is why people prefer lurking.Even the platforms that perfected participation understand this. On Reddit, only a tiny percentage of users actually create posts. On X (or whatever it will be renamed next), most people simply watch others shout. The famous “90-9-1 rule” of internet communities still holds: 90% lurk, 9% comment, and 1% generate chaos. Publishers seem determined to design entire business models around that chaotic 1%.Another charming idea is that audiences will visit publisher sites daily not just for news but for “community.” This assumes that readers are yearning to gather beneath a newspaper masthead like villagers around a well, exchanging thoughtful insights about macroeconomics and municipal zoning laws. In reality, community already exists… just not where publishers would prefer.People argue on group chats. They gossip on messaging apps. They rant in niche forums. By the time a reader arrives at a publisher’s website, they usually want exactly one thing: the article. Not a digital town hall meeting moderated by someone with a badge labelled “Audience Engagement Strategist.”The economics are equally charming. Building participatory platforms requires moderation teams, product designers, community guidelines, identity systems and endless conflict resolution. It is essentially the business model of a social network… minus the scale, the venture capital and the tolerance for chaos.In other words, publishers want to build smaller, calmer versions of the platforms that already dominate the internet, while competing against companies that spend billions engineering addiction. This is a little like opening a neighbourhood casino to compete with Las Vegas, but promising that the slot machines will be more thoughtful.There is also a subtle irony in the argument that platforms reward outrage and velocity. True. But the internet did not invent outrage; it merely industrialised it. Any publisher that opens the gates of participation will quickly discover that readers bring their favourite emotions with them. The first rule of digital communities is simple: the louder voices arrive first.Of course, the idea of building deeper relationships with readers is admirable. Newsletters, memberships and direct subscriptions genuinely strengthen the bond between journalism and its audience. But these are quiet, sustainable relationships built on trust and usefulness… not on endless digital debates. Participation is not inherently a moat. Sometimes it is just noise with better analytics.The internet did not kill publisher relationships; it merely revealed how many readers prefer a simple one-way exchange. They want reliable information delivered efficiently, without being invited to participate in a never-ending group discussion.In fact, the most radical publishing strategy today might be the opposite of participation: clarity. Provide reporting that cuts through noise rather than multiplies it. Deliver analysis that readers cannot find in algorithmic summaries. Build products that respect attention instead of trying to trap it. Not every digital space needs to become a community. Sometimes a newspaper is allowed to be a newspaper.Which may not sound like a revolutionary moat. But compared with the alternative – rebuilding social media inside every publisher’s website – it is at least a strategy that does not require hiring thousands of moderators armed with digital crocodiles.Muneer is a Fortune-500 advisor, start-up investor and co-founder of the non-profit Medici Institute for Innovation. X: @MuneerMuh.