If you watch Shorts, maybe. If you watch normal videos, the comments are pretty much an afterthought.

But even shorts, assuming they're like reels/stories, the "social" aspect is very minimal compared with, say, Facebook posts back in the day, where your friends would see and comment and reply to each other.

The Algorithm doesn't really want that anymore; it wants to feed you content from arbitrary people to keep you passively engaged, not to foster conversation/active engagement.