Tell me more about the checks and balances that exist in book publishing. Publishers --- often mainstream publishers --- published the first editions of Mein Kampf, Camp of the Saints, Architects of Conspiracy, Did Six Million Really Die, and all manner of medical pseudoscience.

Definitely. It is obvious that there is some:

- Time to publish, it’s not instant like the internet

- Allows people to editorialize and review, even if they allow publishing

- Allow critics to voice their opinions before the book blows up

I’m in no way saying we need to have a CCP level control over what gets published or not, but I am just pointing out the virality of social media that didn’t exist before the internet.

You can make many arguments around it, the fact is that the internet fundamentally changed the way conspiracy theories propagate.

Even if controversial books are published, someone is going to a bookstore and buying it. There are reviews on ebooks. There is so much discussion. No such thing is exists in echo chambers.

We had echo chambers long before we had an Internet. Read Rick Perlstein on the John Birch Society, for instance.

> We had echo chambers long before we had an Internet.

Yes indeed. The Internet, as well as some other more modern communication technologies, has greatly optimized the proliferation and psychological impact of the echo chambers.

Probably a digression from OP's point, but perhaps a useful one:

Suppose two long paths leading home are filled with people.

Path one is a park filled with people reading various physical copies of books, one of whom looks up from their copy of Mein Kampf to say something threatening to you.

Path two is filled with innocuous-looking people, all glued to the screens of essentially the same model of smartphone. One of them looks up from their device just long enough to tell you, "Samy is my hero."

Which path do you take and why?