A couple of small ideas that could make comment sections less awful.
Dave Winer, one of the original architects of blogging, suggests this: make replies visible only to the person being replied to. If they want the reply made public, they can publish or share it.
This could also work on social media but won’t, because the platforms have no incentive to make such a change.
Joel Dueck handles it like this on one of his sites. Anyone clicking to leave a comment sees this prompt:
Add to the original piece by submitting your note below. Think of yourself as a co-author on the piece above and write accordingly. These aren’t normal blog comments: this is a submission for publication. Read the guidelines below the form if you’re new here.
Both ideas put the author of the original post in charge of what gets seen – rather than letting the platform broadcast every reply automatically.