...as comments sections grew, they became less useful and more prone to toxic, hateful and counter-deliberative discussions...comments are great when the topic of blogs is more narrow, and the blogger is directly engaged. But in the context of broad and widely popular communities, they had the capability to fester.
As the web continued to grow, the issue grew. Without dedicated moderation, which many publications did try, comments sections became discordant and a liability...Washington Post was one of the first publications to remove comments, citing a lack of civility.
That trend has continued, as many sites chose to outsource discussions to social media platforms and third party networks. For sites that can manage comments, it is done through careful moderation and clear rules. But most major publications and platforms have simply opted out.
Comment sections continue to exist, but their presence is far diminished from its peak. The ActivityPub standard, the backbone of the Fediverse, was created as a partial response to their decline. Whether or not comments will find some new form is a story still unwritten.
My site probably isn't big enough (I don't know since I don't have analytics) but maintenance and moderation are reasons I don't support comments.