The filter bubble

By Matthijs Rotte on 19 September 2011

The amount of information available to us has exploded in the last couple of decades. With the enormous amount available comes the need to filter this information. Filtering the information we want to have has become big business. Just look at Google or Facebook. These information giants control a lot of what we see online. Of course we have some influence on what we see. But it’s just the illusion of that total control that’s the problem.
We’ve been talking about media literacy for a couple of years now, and what strikes me is that a lot of people that consider themselves media literate, don’t even know that Google arranges their ads and results based on your previous searches and visited websites. The same thing counts for Facebook. Facebook looks at what friends you interact most with, and puts them on the top of the list. Pretty nifty, and handy. But there’s a problem. If the company’s that control the filters filter everything they presume you like. How are you supposed to get balanced information. In other words, it seems that everyone online surrounding me is talking about the same thing. This is what’s come to be known as the “filter bubble”. Your online life is in a bubble created by filters. This phenomenon is not new. In a way it’s a form of censorship, I believe. Just imagine that a government decided what we find if we search. I bet the American Tea Party would be quite upset if it was the federal government filtering their search results. I imagine some comparisons to socialist regimes, and a couple of Nazi comparisons as a result. I wonder what Glenn Beck would have to say about that. Wonder if he filters information…
I assume that these filters are in place to make our lives easier, to find the information, we probably want to find, faster. And I for one do not object to that. As long as I know that I’m in my bubble. And as long as I can get out of the bubble, there’s no problem, is there?
Ah well, probably only the people interested in the CrossmediaLab will find this blog in their bubble.

tagged with: filter bubble, google, facebook

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