When people began to realise this trend, they gave it a label: the echo chamber. It referred to an online space where a tribe would increasingly talk only to itself. But in fact this phrase was too modest. Echoes fade. These new tribal territories were more like feedback loops, in which messages contained did not fade, but increased in volume, becoming ever more extreme. This made identity ever more pivotal to people’s assessment of politics, and demanded strict adherence to increasingly radical statements about that group’s principles.
