What are Filter Bubbles?

Imagine standing inside of a bubble and what’s inside that bubble is all you see. You have told the bubble that you love cats but hate dogs. The bubble wants to make you happy, so it only lets in content that agrees with you. You see numerous cat videos, exciting articles about how great cats are and maybe a few texts about how badly dogs behave. This, although a slightly exaggerated illustration, is basically what a filter bubble does to us. It filters the content that we see in order to fit our preferences. This, in the long run, also has an effect on the way we think. What causes filter bubbles, is an algorithm, a sort of calculation, that attempts to show the user the type of content they want to see, based on their previous interests on the web. As a normal user, you might not even have an idea that there is an algorithm tracking what you do and calculating what to show you based on the results. This means that people are not deciding what they want to read from what is actually available, but rather from a small amount of articles picked specifically for them.

But why does any of this interest us? If we look back at the bubble example, the problem is that you often don’t know the bubble exists. It is easy to imagine that everyone must think the same way as you, as there is no other content easily available. Filter bubbles are important to understand, because there are great risks if people don’t realize they are in a filter bubble. Regular exposure of a certain type of content might change your viewpoint of an issue over the course of time, without you even realizing it. This means that filter bubbles can distort your reality of the world. For example, say that you always thought sugar was unhealthy. Then you see an article on Facebook which claims that sugar is actually healthy. You read the article but aren’t convinced of the results. Now imagine, that over the course of the next year, Facebook, Youtube and Google, just to name a few, keep steadily feeding you more content about the health benefits of sugar. You may slowly start to believe that this is true. However, on the other side of the wall might be a person getting the exact opposite feed of content. Both easily fall into the belief that what they are reading is what the world believes. The internet has polarized them towards the opinion that they themselves were slightly leaning towards and possible even radicalized their ideas. These extreme views become the norm for them.

So why are there filter bubbles if all they do is give people a fake reality and cause radicalization? If you think of the enormous mass of information that is available online, there is no way to display all information to all people. There needs to be some selection process. Because the algorithms attempt to give you the type of content that you want, it is also more likely for you to enjoy, or be interested in that content, than if a completely random article was shown to you. Thus, filter bubbles make it easier for you to find the content that you are interested in from the whole mass of content available, making life “easier” for you. Although, of course the bottom reason behind the algorithms existence comes down to money. The more you find articles that you like, the more likely you will click on them, you are also more likely to come back to that same page and recommend it to others. For companies this often translates to money.

So what can we do about filter bubbles. Is there any way to lessen their negative effects. The biggest thing is to acknowledge that you live in a filter bubble. Everything that you see online, is a tiny fraction of what is actually available. Even if you search for something, all results will be tailored to your preferences. Already acknowledging this is critical to avoiding radicalization. The more educated we are about the phenomena, the more we can critically examine any new information we get. Perhaps learning to not always take it at face value. This way we can hopefully learn to be appreciative and understanding towards people with different views that our own.