That's certainly a take. Not sure I disagree, though I think you may be making some leaps. But I maintain that social media algorithms promoting propaganda and misinformation has a far greater effect than actively seeking like-minded individuals on the internet.
I'll give you a specific example that in my political work I noticed long before algorithms became a major factor on the Internet.
In politics prior to say, 2000, individuals who were part of minority groups understood they had to build coalitions in order to get anything done. They formed these coalitions willingly and enthusiastically. Sometime shortly after 2000, I noticed that this was shifting. Individuals who were part of small minority groups began to coalesce in groups and forums on the Internet. Suddenly, if you identified as a minority, where perhaps you were 1 in 100,000 people in your physical community, you could join an internet group or forum of thousands or millions of others in your group. In that support, the idea that you would have to work with others to obtain the rights you wanted faded quickly. It gave the illusion of power to be working with so many like-minded individuals. Suddenly, there was zero patience, and the direct result was strong coalitions began to break apart. Any little difference between individuals grew to be huge differences. Coalitions simply began to disappear in many cases.. Each individual now demanded their rights immediately. And instead of building a movement, there was no patience. All politics became gorilla politics, where the goal was simply to disrupt any proceedings that didn't immediately address the grievances of the specific individuals.
Anyway...I ramble.
I think that has been made possible and exacerbated by the internet apart from the algorithms of the big players (which yes, make it worse).
