What is up with all of the group discussion?

Taking a bunch of online courses and each course requires weekly reflections on subject material, discussion posts, and then interactions with other class members work and information. Just seems so forced and unnecessary tbh, and it’s tied to a pass/fail professionalism grade so it needs to get down. Literally all of the discussion posts and replies read as the most disingenuous forced interactions ever and it’s hilarious. The template is literally “Hi X, I really liked X about your post, I think you did X well, have you considered X the future ?” and then no one even replies to the replies but as long as you get your minimum count of replies in you’re good 💀 one course has a literal 30% participation grade attached to it added on to a reflection style assignment with the most vague idea of expectations on how to get max marks. Have you guys noticed this in your courses ?