Doctor Mike

How do you gauge it?

Then there's questions about authenticity of commentary online.

Again, how many of the commenters are real versus not real?

Do certain governments flood comment zones about certain topics at certain times?

Yes, they do.

Is that a common thing?

Really depends on how well certain platforms police it.

God knows what's happening on X right now.

YouTube, I really don't know.

Then there's questions about what comments are upranked, which also creates different types of perceptions, right?

Because there is no such thing as a neutral feed.

what information is curated for you is very personalized.

So there is what's called a majority illusion, right?

Where depending on who you talk to, what content you see, what comments you read, you're going to form a perception of what a majority opinion is or where people are based on what is around you.

This is where, again, you see people who are very, very surprised to learn that their entire, you know,

pockets of opinion that they never encounter.

This actually was very common during COVID, depending on what bubbles you found yourself in.

It's very common in highly divisive political topics where an algorithm decides that you're going to want to see something because you're a particular type of person and you start getting a whole lot of content curated for you.

TikTok is notorious for this because it doesn't even really matter who you're following.

It's just, you know,