Hide is super useful for threads you want to read but have the typical knee-jerk flamebait war responses at the top that turn into massive comment trees that you want to skip.
A lot of times the good stuff is at the bottom.
A lot of times the good stuff is at the bottom.
The population of commenters seems to be dominated by those whose goal is to argue and win, rather than to understand and learn. So many times I see comments that make no attempt to take context into account, and instead conflate all sorts of things, making it impossible to comment productively. (Basic example: Top comment has not replied to the thesis of the article, but to something else.) When one of these types of comments is at the top of the comments list I just hide the whole story, because there’s literally nothing to see but people talking past each other.