It all depends on how many authors will use this. If it gets widely adopted, yes, it may create some barriers. But look at the typical Medium post: a lot pf claps, but hardly any comment. Only really viral posts have dozens of comments.
We may have a lot of comments on Steemit right now, but the real contribution to a meaningful conversation of many of them is close to zero.
What worries me about the comment level at the moment is that so many are left by upvote bots. I look at some of the daily stats, and comments per post are declining... I just wonder HOW badly they are declining, once you remove bot comments. Can't be pretty.
I really wish there were a way to increase interest in human curation and interaction...