I think this works quite nicely once we get rid of outgoing links
It’s a comment about this comment. So comment on comment makes sense. Not the prettiest of icons but it is pretty semantic.
For a less ugly one, comment-o can do the job…
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Anyway… I just stripped off all outgoing links so it should be significantly easier to explain now. We also should add a tooltip… that can help.
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Ugh not generic speech bubble. The arrow is fine, it is a link, same glyph we use to notify you when someone links to your posts.
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I agree with @codinghorror from 2013:
Maybe right-align the text so the arrow can point left and toward the post?
Let’s compare a few options:
1. Left aligned, arrow pointing to the left
2. Left aligned, arrow pointing to the right
3. Right aligned, arrow pointing to the left
4. Right aligned, arrow pointing to the right
I like option 2 the most.
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Putting on my 
hat, 1) is consistent with the notifications you get, and consistency wins
3 and 4 look terrible, like an out of place text pyramid
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Good argument. Maybe the icon in the notifications is wrong too? 
But before this bikeshedding gets out of hand, let me just say that option 1 is definitely better than 3 and 4 or no icon at all.
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Of the options above, I like #1 the best too.
Here’s another option like #2 that has the arrows pointing away from the source topic and toward the destination post (but would require flipping the icon used everywhere):
5. Left, aligned, arrow on the right, pointing to the left
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In keeping with the Android iconography of incoming and outgoing calls…
Which personally I see many times a day and I’m sure other users do too.
There isn’t a perfect icon in font awesome but some simple rotation provides us with.
… a simple rotation on a long arrow looks OK too
Keep in mind these arrows look different at 100% zoom - which they are not without clicking to enlarge the image.
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It would be better if they were at least pointing up to the post they refer to, instead of away from it.
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I’d love to see #2 with the arrow pointing to the topic title itself. #1 works as well.
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Another option is the dual headed arrow:
That might be best, as these are indeed dual-way links. I also like that it reminds me of a simple list dash bullet, as it is not overly arrow-y. Let’s try that out, since we can … wait for it …
HAVE IT BOTH WAYS
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I think you just pulled a reverse King Solomon
That icon sure is ugly 
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I think it is ok, reminds me of this
- item 1
- item 2
- item 3
OMG just remove the icons already!!!
Maybe @falco is right. I thought about using link icon. At least then it is not a rare glyph we barely use anywhere else.
Like @falco’s post above if you prefer link glyph.
edit: this is clearly never going to be resolved to anyone’s satisfaction. (I’m not saying I felt there was an obvious “winner” anywhere in here, either.) So, in the interest of less bikeshedding, I am making the final editorial decision that we’ll use the link icon there, since these are absolutely links, and that thematically ties together the link button action, and there’s no arrow direction to worry over 
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Y’alls moving too fast for me at least. I don’t get why all this bikeshedding is going on, and how this is the answer.
For me, the 
icon is what I encourage members of my community to use to link to this topic, esp to pull in friends and colleagues via email or social media, not to say there are incoming or outgoing links to other topics on my site. Meanwhile the hitherto used left and right arrows on linked topics are meaningful. They show you which posts link here and that this post links to.
If anything, just do this. Remove the icons and only show the incoming links. The outgoing links are not hard to find.
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Already done and deployed yesterday
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