Life in the Bubble- How the Filter Bubble influences thinking

Throughout history, man has sought to find others with likemindedness. With the growth of technology and powerful companies such as Google and Amazon, this search for likemindedness has evolved into what is known as the “Filter Bubble”. The filter bubble is coined by internet activist Eli Pariser in his book “The Filter Bubble: What the Internet is Hiding  from You”.

The structure of business on the Internet is free of charge, and a person gives his personal information to an Internet company in exchange for its service. By knowing people’s interests, the filter bubble begins its influence on people. As a result of a personalized web account on the internet, the Filter Bubble creates an absolute disadvantage to human technology and a world view. First of all, I don’t think peoplewould like others knowing about their personal information, especially strangers. In this way, putting your personal information while you register for an account is actually disclosing your privacy. Most recently, Experian suffered a security breach when millions of people had their private information exposed, which to me is one of the results of the Filter Bubble.

A second disadvantage of the Filter Bubble is that it creates a limitation of view. By separating people from the news they are not interested in, people will not gain enough information about the world. For example, if a Republican can only see people with the same viewpoint, he cannot have enough information about a Democrat way of thinking on the other side. Therefore, most people may not know the issues in an election and they will not be able to carry out their responsibilities as a citizen of the United States. Technology has provided many benefits, but has also created the potential for people to isolate their thinking, with sometimes surprising results, such as the election of Donald Trump. Furthermore, the Filter Bubble actually reduces people’s creativities because they are not able to see all sorts of views and technology when they are imprisoned by their interests. 

From my perspective, China itself is a Filter Bubble. If I would have any chance to put atag about China, it would be “isolation”. The most recent new I heard about China in the US is  that missiles have been launched from North Korea. However, I did not read any news about it when I logged into my Chinese social media. I found an article about China blocking the news of missile launching written by Neil Conner, which perfectly represents the Filter Bubble. The political cartoon by Paresh Nath shown above portrays China as sleeping and not being aware of the danger of the North Korea Nuclear Program, this supports my view that China isolates itself from troubles in other parts of the world, even a country as near as North Korea.

In general, I don’t think we can completely avoid Filter Bubble in our daily life, but we can reduce Filter Bubble as much as possible such as searching for informations not from social media but on the newspaper. In this way, we can take advantage to improve our country as an american citizen.