One way it may have gotten worse is the perception that it’s not there. If I’m hanging out with friends and we all agree, it’s obvious we’re just a small group.

One way it may have gotten worse is the perception that it’s not there. If I’m hanging out with friends and we all agree, it’s obvious we’re just a small group. When all the top votes posts on reddit or twitter agree with my leanings, it’s much easier to think that random tens of millions of internet users must be more representative. With some of the upvote dynamics, it probably won’t even be representative of their own whole userbase. It’s so easy to forget that if like 51% of users have a view which they comment and upvote, downvoting the rest, then all the top comments might end up agreeing and you’ll never see the views of the 49% unless you scroll a mile down. (Then you get another headline that causes maybe 2% change their minds or not click through and the 51:49 flips to 49:51 and looks like the whole community flipped around and is totally hypocritical.)