Filter Bubble: A Threat to Democracy

Today’s article may end up small in length but there’s a great significance to it. It’s all about one of the many mechanisms that take place in today’s technology-ruled world. Under the barrier of our scope, many of them are set to work, without even noticing their existence. The words are about the Filter Bubble.

What is the Filter Bubble?

A “filter bubble” or ideological frame is a state of intellectual isolation that can result from personalized searches, recommendation systems, and algorithmic curation.

In more detail, when we google something (and we discussed in the previous article How to Google right) Google does not look only for websites that match the search request you enter, but it also looks for sites that match you! Based on your search history, location and any other data it holds about you, it tailors which results to display, so that eventually you might end up trapped in your own private ‘bubble’, which limits your horizons.

Similarly, Facebook’s News Feed shows you stories that are influenced by your connections and activity on Facebook. This same practice goes on through various internet services that we use frequently in our every-day lives.

Of course, we can be optimistic, supporting the idea that this mechanism of the filter bubble came up, at first hand at least, as a useful tool. And this might be true. But, as the above discussed process takes place, one can support the idea that the internet is selecting the providing info in our favour. It “knows” what I’d like to see or read and it provides it to me. But is that so?

The Downside

In certain ways, filter bubbles can be considered not only as a limit of personal internet consumption, but as a threat to democracy as well!. This is because it may result in us only sharing ideas with like-minded people, so that we are not exposed to differing points of view. We simply end up having our existing opinions and beliefs continually reinforced.

In his farewell address, President Barack Obama spoke of the ‘retreat into our own bubbles, …especially our social media feeds, surrounded by people who look like us and share the same political outlook and never challenge our assumptions …’.

If you like to go deeper and understand better the political aspect of the filter bubble, you can watch Eli Parsier’s talk in TED in the following link.

So, can we do something about it?

It is possible to free yourself from the filter bubble, at least to some point. For example, you can delete your Google search history. But doing this also has a downside. In future, your search results may be less relevant to you. Similarly, you might refuse Google permission to use your location. But then if you search for retail outlets, you won’t find the local ones you were after.

Probably the simplest way to do a search that won’t be filtered by your history is to use a web searcher such as DuckDuckGo, which is a search engine provider that claims not to track you.

Another way to break the bubble is to share this article with your friends so they can reach out to new interesting information outside their bubble. 😀

Thanks for reading!