At the same time, none of that prevents Metafilter from being an echo chamber. I suspended my membership a couple of years back because I found the political discussions there increasingly toxic. Stepping even slightly outside the group consensus can lead to aggressive and sbusive pile-ons, and obvious moderation biases are often handwaved away on the grounds of 'community preferences.' I'm pretty liberal but I got tired of getting crucified for even considering/ analyzing opposing points of view rather than condemning them.

Metafilter qua persistent community has quite different dynamics from Ask Metafilter.