I posted about my whoas with the reply button a couple of months ago. Sadly, no one ever replied. I guess I am the only person with these feelings. Because nothing in the DOM has a class, it's almost impossible for me to hide the REPLY button with CSS. Are there any tricks that I don't know about? I don't see any ability to hide it in the customizer.
Another thing that I would like is to customize the placeholder text in the comment box. Maybe if I change it from "What are your thoughts" to something like "Reply here" I can get people to use the reply buttons less.