The comment section isn’t the public. It’s the few people who stayed to argue.

Almost everyone who reads something says nothing and moves on. What is left underneath is a tiny self-selected group with enough feeling to type, which skews hard towards the angry and the certain. Treating that as public opinion is like judging a concert by the few people who stayed behind to complain at the box office.

When something you posted gets a harsh reply, count how many people saw it and said nothing at all. If you are deciding what to do next, ask one person you trust instead. And notice if you only ever comment when you are annoyed, because then you are part of somebody else’s skewed sample.