&gt; Once people discover that others agree with them, they become more confident -- and then more extreme.<p>And then the example plus explanation.<p>&gt; Arriving at these judgments on your own, you might well hold them tentatively and with a fair degree of humility. But after you learn that a lot of people agree with you, you are likely to end up with much greater certainty<p>This mechanism is considered extreme? Why? When a lot of people agree with me on some issue then naturally I&#x27;ll be more confident in expressing my views.<p>So what if Facebook pairs tin foil hat wearers together so they can share their views? I doubt that they&#x27;ll start believing that they are now the mainstream.<p>I suspect that the writer of this article just deeply resents the fact that persons with out of the norm beliefs or thoughts can now effectively organise and exchange ideas which in turn directly threatens the journalists monopoly on creating the mainstream narrative.<p>It is a good thing that ideas and views from other perspectives are now widely available online. You now can watch RT and then CNN or FOX and conclude that basically all of these channels are just feeding us propaganda crap with different goals.