Definitely! This is especially a big issues with focus groups (I had to run a bunch for a few semesters for part of my marketing degree, and one of the first things you learn is how to disrupt an echo chamber: if X and Y say two very positive things about a widget, than Z is suddenly very disincentivized to say anything negative and everyone else is more inclined to join the echo chamber).

But I don't think that's whats being brought up with the article. Literary critics are more or less the 'first voters' on new books: and yet, the correlation between critical successes and commercial successes are tentative at best (while the first few votes on an article are always an indicator of future votes.)

This is mainly, I think, a function of accessibility: you see the rating of a link on HN before you even click on the link, while most (I'd say 90%+) of the people buying books do so unaware of what everyone before them thought about the book.