I don't know. Upvotes often do the same thing, especially in siloed communities. I feel like this is a larger problem -- people leaning into extremifying their views or just playing to an audience -- even though one might frame it as "prosocial" because it happens within the context of an online community.

> Upvotes often do the same thing, especially in siloed communities.

Yeah. I've gotten caught in this pattern here on HN. Post something, there's some disagreement but then I see the quiet upvotes trickling in, sometimes by the dozen. That sort of signal slowly convinced me I was right about plenty of stuff.

I used AI to datamine all of my HN comments and find those patterns. Then I started asking the AI to steelman the hell out of my world view, every single argument.

Both could be true. People follow incentives.