> The internet doesn't radicalize people. People radicalize people. I tend to agree but it's an oversimplification of the problem. There is a fantastic book about the psychology of radicalization by Robert B Caldini "Influence"[1] that has apart from the more common scenarios like exploiting reciprocity etc the idea about saying things out loud. There are 3 stages, you get people to read it, then you get them to say it then you get them to sign it. Once they say it it will be hard for them not to sign it since it means walking back on their argument and society likes consistency and hates flip-flopping. After you get them to sign, it's now recorded in history like something that can compromise you in future. Even you delete it you have said it before. This is relevant on especially for things that go viral or have a large audience. How does that relate to social media?
Especially on platforms that enforce a real name policy you get shallow thoughts because people are careful (LinkedIn is a good example). But even on things like twitter / reddit people will have followers and a karma that they attach themselves (their ego) to.
We do not communicate by saying things but we immediately jump to the stage of writing it down. Now these are usually not well thought out opinions since they haven't been argued in a group and tested against our peers. We blurt out not opinions but brain-farts that we test against an audience but at this stage they are already written down.
If the message shared is popular you get the likes flooding in where every person is likely not to read this message more than once before liking / sharing. But the effect on the author is different because they end up reading what they wrote several times as a way of congratulating themselves and reliving the moment of gratification. So it's actually a form of self-radicalization on half baked thoughts (than radicalization by others). An important step is missing where the author of a message can verbalize the idea with real people f2f before jumping to "the writing it down" stage. That makes it harder not to double down once critic is expressed by an audience. Add to this tribal culture of in/out groups those who will oppose the message can be drowned out with a click of a button (I'm not arguing for letting trolls take over and abolishing mute/block button, but these don't exit IRL. Anyway I'm only trying to deconstruct the process)
There are very few people on social media humble enough not to drink their own kool-aid. The majority of users are absolutely eaten by the system and spat out again without realizing what happened. the concept of writing it down is so powerful that we have even built a legal / trust system around it where we require people to scribble their name under something they have read to make it binding.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influence:_Science_and_Practic...