‘Unkind’ is such a diplomatic way to put it! I used to post a lot on Reddit say around 2008-12, then it began to get a bit intolerable. Some subs you were guaranteed to have an ‘unkind’ response or a deluge of downvotes I think because people were so hyper-competitive about their comments being seen over yours, because of that engagement issue you mention.
Ideally governments should be pushing things like threat to life alerts out via a digital emergency alert system (e.g. Amber alerts) rather than hoping those potentially impacted are checking Twitter.
Which is funny because the UK decided to finally implement this recently and my god the Twitter Boomers were mad.