I disagree that organizing by votes is inherently better than a chronological view. You simply end up with different problems. I’d probably argue that diversity of thought is much penalized in a voting system, which might be worse in the bigger picture. A better way forward would somehow combine the two.

Perhaps I should have clarified that I meant better in a UX sense.

Those cons you mention definitely do exist, they're an emergent problem of the conversations and communities that arise, but opinion bubbles never seem to be a bottleneck for a platform gaining popularity - which makes sense since they, by definition, favor the majority's opinion.

I'm also not convinced that chronological ordering is better for diversity of opinion: comments might not be hidden directly, but they can be drowned. In a reddit-like system each user can downvote you just once, while in a message board system each user can post N times, with each post making your opinion a smaller portion of the conversation.

What chronological posts are better at is favoring power users over casual users: there is a clear advantage for those who can post early and/or often. For everything besides the starting post of the thread, it also rewards short and not very thoughtful posts (since posting later is punished in visibility). The result is also a bubble, and one dictated by the people that spend their lives on the boards.

And in my personal opinion, there's not a lot of overlap between the people that lead interesting lives and are great at their fields and those willing to spend a great portion of their life in a message board.

Hmm. Maybe a solution to this is a limited number of posts per day/week. Or a limited number of upvotes/downvotes to give out. It would (helpfully) people to be concise and thoughtful with their comments.