[anenefan]

Echo chambers are not a recent phenomenon, but social media turbo charged it refining the engagement factor. The fact moderation by and large in social media platforms were able to utilise a report button and a script, rather than live human moderators was all thanks IMO to the changes as per 2006 (see reply to AJRF [OP], 2007 is when iirc I started to notice the stark changes to the rest of the discussion areas and occasion angry ex Facebook user. The near humanless moderation apart from the occasion cookie cutter, was particularly conducive for designing algorithms to exploit people, especially young impressionable people.

Additionally no one was really closely monitoring the sleep quality of those who frequented the net, or those who were really engaged (near omni present) on the net pre 2005, but I don't recall thinking the conversations had back then were anything as borked as some ... most of the crud in some social media areas. I'm left with a sense, sensibility was much higher a couple of decades ago ... or one knew that they were going to be called out on whatever they said if it was in error.