There’s no great way to handle people whose only goal is to drag you down or lessen you. Just block and move on to better things.
This is especially true on platforms where engagement = content is promoted (ex. Instagram)
You’ll notice that the most controversial comments show up first, and that’s because a lot of people have replied to it to argue or tell the person off. I’m willing to bet a lot of those controversial comments just do it to get views to their account.
Instead of engaging, block the user. If an account usually has bad behaviour in the comments, drop the whole account.
Over time you might see less of the trolls, and it will tell the algorithm that people don’t want to see it. If the platform is engineered to increase engagement, it should try to avoid users hard blocking content
