HN, Reddit, and sites alike have an extremely awkward relationship with "content mills." They're link aggregators, so threads start from links. But nobody read

HN, Reddit, and sites alike have an extremely awkward relationship with "content mills." They're link aggregators, so threads start from links. But nobody reads the linked articles, they only head the "headline." In other words, the headline is the title of the thread, and the comments are a discussion starting from that title. So what is the linked content? From the user's perspective, the linked article is just another comment. Which for users somehow make sense. The "author" is just an user with a site making a comment on a topic on their own website, while the thread are users without their own websites making comments on the same topic. If a single "comment" is just somebody's opinion, then it's highly likely most "are not worth reading," including the linked article. So why is the link necessary in first place then? It certainly doesn't feel like it's needed. You could make a social media where to start a new thread you just type the topic and that's enough. We could also have the extreme opposite: we could have a social media where you also just type the topic to start a thread, but all "comments" must be links to articles. I wonder if there's a social media like that. It would be interesting to compare what the threads look like.