Lots of good ideas here. Trust in social information, and which social information you trust are super interesting questions that I would love to do more work

Lots of good ideas here. Trust in social information, and which social information you trust are super interesting questions that I would love to do more work on. It's possible that it's something along the lines you say. Another possibility is people just don't have good estimates of popularity among people they don't know, so they overestimate the popularity of opinions represented in their immediate networks.