Yeah, the nested comments section with up/downvotes is the most efficient way to structure a discussion. Infinitely better than the old forums.
There are a few issues with how up/downvotes can be undesirably distributed (like brigading), but the core concept is good.
It would make sense to have different filters on top of that.
Like rewarding high-quality comments (based on some metric like lexical complexity). Or maximizing diversity of opinion, like by rewarding comments that are different from all the others, would help with the circle jerking and brigading. Or categorizing comments as serious, joke, insult, by political leaning, etc.
Also with these LLMs, it would be interesting to try and summarize the entire comments section, giving you briefly the most brought up points or most interesting points.
Or by rewarding comments that have been made by people like you. Like if you are a nuclear physicist, you will preferentially see comments by other nuclear physicists.
And you can toggle between all of them like new, hot, too all, etc.
Perhaps you would even have a marketplace for these filters where anyone can post new ones, like an app store. Give users maximum control over their experienve.