I think the key thing people aren't accounting for is the displacement of conversations. There's probably a highly elevated rate of conversations about topics people can't express in person.

Regardless of people's opinions of the threads, there's still the discrepancy between most people characterizing the thread as right wing when in reality the majority of participants were left leaning.

There's studies that show that people on either extremes of the political spectrum are more likely to see centrist or even moderates on the same side as being on the opposite side of the political spectrum. I see a lot of that happening in the Bay Area. Things like setting up more restrictive hiring flows for white and Asian men is taken for granted in much of the Bay Area when such policies are pretty controversial in much of the country. On the flip side, mainstream conservative views like support for restrictions on abortion is essentially unheard of.

I'm sure there are conservative places that are analogues to the Bay area on the other end of the political scale. But that doesn't make it any less of a concern to me.