Help, We’re Trapped

What is it like to live in a bubble? Believe it or not, this is a question for you and for the 1.7 billion users of the infamous search engine Google. Whether they are searching for the address of the nearest grocery store or for information on the latest presidential debate, their search is being filtered through anywhere from 57 to 200 different filters, as Eli Pariser brings to attention in his Ted Talk.

These filters range from where you live to, more importantly, what kinds of things the user normally searches. The filter bubble is created by these blinders of sorts restricting one’s view of the world.

For example, when they were searching for the address of the nearest grocery store, the first thing that pops up may be for a Whole Foods caused by their recent searches for different types of superfoods, despite there being an Albertson’s much closer. This would be an example of the filter bubble hard at work.

However, it doesn’t only affect search engine searches. One could argue that people experience filter bubbles online and offline. With more than just search engines like Google using algorithms to personalize the internet experience, social media is being over run with personalized feeds, essentially wiping out any opposing viewpoints due to uneven amounts interaction with them. Uneasiness around opposing viewpoints arises from this lack of exposure, which in turn creates a kind of real-life filter bubble. Without any experience online with differing opinions and conversations about them, which are anonymous and often times easier to avoid if they become confrontational because the user can just leave the page, real-life conversations about the same topics are even more daunting and quite frankly are avoided at any cost.

We also have no real sense of what the rest of our country is thinking. The best example of this was the previous Presidential election. People felt blindsided by the election of Donald Trump, and Mostafa M. El-Bermawy of Wired says that may be due to the filterbubble’s restrictions on our social media feeds.

There is a kind of fear of confronting or even speaking to someone with completely differing opinions because it is unpredictable how they will react. Will they be blissfully ignorant of the bubble they exist within? Or, will they seize the opportunity to burst it? Given the current politically divided state that America is in, these questions have potentially life ending consequences.

This is why the filter bubble matters. Without it, extremists on both sides of the political spectrum would be confronted with factual information rather than information that promotes their ideology. A kind of echo chamber of like-minded ideas and political opinions forms and is almost inescapable, with it existing off and on line.

As users, it is our responsibility to ensure that we burst the bubble on our feeds and in our daily life. We need to have uncomfortable, tricky, but respectful and educational discussions about the situation we have found ourselves in as a nation and as individuals. So, the question isn’t “What is it like to live in a bubble?”, it’s “How do we escape it?”.