Some of us rarely read the articles. They're often, frankly, a waste of time. And it's hard to tell just by the headline whether it's worth reading or not. The comments often tell me whether the article is worth reading faster than the article would. (And some of the time the article is paywalled, and some of the time it's a video, which makes it harder to skim.)

And often I learn more from the comments than I would from the article.