The Power of the Comment Section 

Many organizations that monitor social media have traditionally focused on what people post. More recently, at the Command Center, we have started paying closer attention to replies. We noticed that conversations and opinions often form in the comment section itself. This shift in our focus is supported by research showing that comments can influence users’ opinions and emotions, as well as by social media platforms’ own documentation, which says comments impact what content users see in the first place. 

Research on Comment Influence

A 2024 meta-analysis in Cyberpsychology found that online comments can influence message perception, beliefs, attitudes, behavior, and emotional response. Positive comments, especially, were associated with more favorable views of the original post and a greater willingness to express matching opinions. The effect was strongest when comment sections were one-sided. Readers use comment sections to infer what most people think. 

Research on comment re-ranking (changing the order in which comments are shown) also gives insight into the influence of comment sections. A 2024 study with 460 U.S.-based readers found that re-ordering news comments by constructiveness and curiosity increased perceived respect, trustworthiness, and interest in the comment section. As the authors of the meta-analysis wrote, “online comments, serving as exemplar for majority public opinions or cues for social norms, are powerful to push individuals to opinion conformity.” This re-ranking research showed that comment order is not neutral. 

How Platforms Use Comment Signals

TikTok’s own help materials say that its recommendation system uses user interactions, and that comment-related signals such as the number of likes and the comment text can influence what users see. Meta has also said that its AI systems rank content across Facebook and Instagram using comments as input. X’s public recommendation-code repository also says that user signals such as replying are used in content ranking. 

Malicious Activity in Replies

Comment sections are not only where public opinion is visible, but also where malicious actors can try to influence it through bot-powered mass commenting. Cyabra, a company that specializes in identifying inauthentic social media activity, found in its analysis of social media activity following the Egypt-Argentina World Cup match that 72% of inauthentic activity was in the replies, not the original posts. 

Why the Reply Layer Matters

For these reasons, some of our recent work has shifted toward the reply layer. Social media platforms have the power to rank comments, and that ranking can shape how users interpret the post itself. In our Yom HaShoah analysis on X (Twitter), replies that explicitly rejected commemoration of the day (through Holocaust denial or moral inversion) averaged 37% per year from 2024 to 2026, compared with 10% on average from 2021 to 2023. We have also looked at comment threads on posts about Kanye West’s Tampa-area concerts and more. For many users, the comment section is not a side conversation. It is part of the message.