In the end I killed comments on my site for three reasons.

First, the ratio of comment spam to real comments was high. While tools like Akismet do a decent job, there were still fake or spammy comments I was letting through only to realise later I'd been conned.

Second, real people would abuse the comments. If, say, I had a story that mentioned 5G cellular networks, comments would appear on the site promoting various conspiracies and misinformation.

Third, it became clear people were somehow able to inject comments without reading the story. I tried an experiment and created a story that received comments but didn't have any reads.

That incident was the final straw.

I'd like to return to having comments, but it needs to be better, more secure and easier to manage than the stock Wordpress approach.