I think this might be an extreme case of misunderstanding how internet communities work.
Without comments, HN would be just a boring link aggregator and we'd get very little information if the article was BS or not. But because we have comments we get gems at times where 'the creator of X' discusses the merits of the article. That can be nearly priceless. Things like this draw people that don't upvote and don't comment, but they still get immense value from it.
Posts are what makes Reddit, so much so that Reddit created hundreds of fraudulent profiles in their early days to fake popularity.
Of course this interests me what the future looks like for social media. At one time in the past you needed users to generate and post content. Could we end up with social media sites with 'good enough' bots faking humans that draw in the masses, but few biological commenters and posters would exist?
It's not because a few terminally online Reddit addicts are vocally posing as the resistance that the majority of the community supports it.