Bubbles

Filter bubbles are one thing, where the algorithms that build the walls you live in might prevent you from seeing outside of your one-way mirror. Facebook can be a filter bubble, and Google or Bing can be a different kind of search bubble. But what about the nature of news and bias in the first place? If you subscribe to News Magazine X, you are getting fed their bias. This is the way it always has been, but the internet allows people to carve further, deeper niches.

In a way this is similar to how like-minded communities collaborated before the internet: people got together, organized around what they agreed upon, and boom: collaboration develops. You had zine culture. You had think tanks. You had obscure groups with obscure goals, editing and sending newsletters.

The problem with the internet search and news filter bubbles is that they are somewhat illusory, in a sense that's hard to quantify. Both meatspace news and internet news feed you a line, and to see things outside that, you have to work at it. But the internet version of news, possibly due to its speed and seeming all-encompassing-ness, deludes us. I look at a single perspective on the news (pick one) and I can think: "Oh, I have amassed all the viewpoints on this news!"

It's just not in our nature to constantly be deconstructing bias in the news, or always trying to aggregate all sides of an issue. Is it because we're tribal? Destined to form small groups and stick with them, unable to collaborate more broadly?

How do we engage in a more meaningful sense across these divides? It seems that technological tools could help bring us together, rather than keep us in our little filter bubbles. But how?