Social media discourse is driven by false #polarization Analyzing 1.7 million social media posts, a series of controlled experiments, and a large global survey covering 40 countries (total N = 49,222), we find that (1) strong ideologues post their opinions significantly more often than moderate individuals (2) extreme attitudes are posted more often than moderate attitudes. (3) This general pattern replicates robustly across 40 countries (4) the opinions that users post are more hostile and toxic than the beliefs they keep to themselves. Across studies we find extreme opinions are overrepresented on social media by at least 6% and up to 22% compared to their true prevalence in our samples. osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/7z… This project was led by @small_schulz and @ClaireRobertson and includes @H_Sjastad @AshuAshok @LisaFOswaldo @junghwanyang @simonsaysnothin and @andyguess