
Few people are actually trapped in filter bubbles. Why do they say they are? - Reedx
http://www.niemanlab.org/2018/12/few-people-are-actually-trapped-in-filter-bubbles-why-do-they-like-to-say-that-they-are/
======
codeulike
Niemanlab seem a bit confused here.

People have _always_ been in self-created filter bubbles - its called
Confirmation Bias.

The concern with Google and Facebook and YouTube is that they are now re-
inforcing that confirmation bias even more.

NiemanLab cite a few studies here but them seem to be focusing on Google
Search Results whereas things like Facebook Walls and the way YouTube
recommends 'extreme' points of view on any given topic are also of concern.

Essentially a huge part of the internet is now optimising for clicks, which
means targeted clickbait and sensationalism will always crowd out reasoned
argument.

~~~
lostmyoldone
Yeah, they seem to missing the point completely.

The problem, which is hopefully well known, but bears repeating is that our
brain learns the structure of the world by repetition and exposure, and
typically seem to be quite unbiased apart from this exposure.

Hence, a continuous over-abundance of content that caters to our biases will
strongly affect our behavior, often even when we consciously think it's
garbage. It is why and how advertising works, and probably why averages of
peoples faces are seen as more beautiful than any of the faces in the mix.

In sensor tasks, the vision system ( amongst other ) can be shown to be close
to Bayesian perfect in how it recovers information from sensory input, which
should give pause to any argument - as those in the article - that only
_complete_ filter bubbles should be seen as such.

Even a partial filter bubble could, and anecdotally does, sometimes completely
shortcut this information recovery from noisy data, as the basic "assumption"
of the brain would have to be that the environment doesn't lie. Which in a
bubble is no longer true.

If we were adept at living in a world that lies to us, I imagine
neuropathologies that create auditory hallucinations of various forms would
not be even remotely as problematic as they are. But assuming a purely
statistical interpretation of the environment, it's easy to see that eg a
persistent voice in your head is going to cause serious issues over time.

If you boil it all down, that is what a filter bubble becomes, a voice
persistently telling lie about how the world looks and works, on average.

This in turn can lead to radicalization, distrust, paranoia, and other forms
of unhealthy thought patterns, as similar mechanisms does when "statistical
lies" are generated internally by our minds.

------
chrisco255
In my experience, few people are NOT trapped in a filter bubble. If you've
ever moved from a conservative area to a liberal area of the country, or vice
versa, you'll _feel_ this in your interactions with people. In modern
politics, it's far more difficult to find people who are able to
constructively engage with both sides than it is to find blatant partisans.
Simple test for this is to ask some one to describe the positions of the other
party and why they feel the way they do without using any disparaging or
cynical terms. Fun experiment, I invite you to try it.

~~~
agsdfgsd
>Simple test for this is to ask some one to describe the positions of the
other party and why they feel the way they do without using any disparaging or
cynical terms

That doesn't work because liberals are unable to understand and empathize with
conservative views. They lack the same fundamental values, and so they are
unable to see conservative views as being within a set of values that are
different from their own. Instead they see conservative views as being
contrary to values, period. Liberals being asked to answer a survey the way
they think a conservative would will answer agree/disagree questions like "one
of the worst things a person could do is hurt a defenseless animal" with
disagree, but actual conservatives say agree. On the other hand, conservatives
are able to accurately answer the same survey as a liberal would. Moderates
are able to answer accurately as either a liberal or a conservative.

[https://theindependentwhig.com/haidt-
passages/haidt/conserva...](https://theindependentwhig.com/haidt-
passages/haidt/conservatives-understand-liberals-better-than-liberals-
understand-conservatives/)

~~~
gerbilly
> That doesn't work because liberals are unable to understand and empathize
> with conservative views.

Actually conservatives and liberals do share a lot of values. Let's call this
the foundational set V.

Conservatives go on to add additional values to the set V: mostly concerns for
purity, respect for authority and a heightened concern for security. Let's
call this set A.

Conservatives could then easily predict the answers of liberals because they
are both based on V, but it's not symmetrical, because conservatives are
working from a bigger set of values V+A.

~~~
repolfx
Whilst that's one way to phrase it, the underlying differences are deeper and
more to do with perception of the span of human nature.

For instance the apparent love of conservatives for 'respect for authority' is
not actually respect for authority (why would they be so against big
government if that were the case?) nor particular to conservatives, but
rather, a preference for systems and formalised power structures over loose,
informally specified power structures. One can observe that people with
liberal views often have tremendous respect for certain types of unstructured
authority, in particular, academics.

The book "A Conflict Of Visions" provides an alternative explanation for this
apparent discovery that liberals cannot understand conservatives but not vice-
versa. Conservatives see disagreement with their world view as naivety, but
liberals see disagreement with _their_ world view as the result of an evil or
malign nature. The latter view leads to a belief that attempting to understand
such a perspective is itself immoral behaviour, as you might be legitimising
it, or alternatively, might be tempted to the dark side by mere exposure to
the ideas themselves.

This is why you see so much no-platforming and general censorship coming from
people with particular world views: they believe that conservative ideas work
like some sort of infectious disease. Conservatives don't think that way about
liberal views.

~~~
gerbilly
Ok, let me tweak my list of additional conservative values then: heightened
concern for purity, intolerance of ambiguity and a heightened concern for
security.

NOTE: I am not conservative, so take that for what it's worth.

------
gundmc
"Filter Bubbles" are a real phenomenon to be wary of, particularly for
something like YouTube that aggressively suggests videos and autoplays by
default or Facebook that injects stories into your news feed. I think what the
article misses on that front is not that users don't have access to other
sources, but they're passively spoon fed stories that reinforce their beliefs.

But I'm not convinced this expands to Search. Search algorithm implementations
are enough of a nebulous black box that it makes for a convincing story, and
Duck Duck Go has been shamelessly spinning that FUD for advertising, but the
claims don't really stand up to scrutiny.

~~~
spondyl
It's somewhat anecdotal but in my experience, Twitter search can be quite
filter bubbly.

I've had this recording sitting around in my YouTube account which illustrates
an example of this: CES 2015 which was around the time of the shit show known
as Gamergate.

The event aside, it was interesting to understand how sides were inflamed
based on what they were seeing thanks to Twitter effectively amplifying
similar opinions, creating an echo chamber.

Here's a link to the recording:
[https://youtu.be/yoCcKYJ7hDI](https://youtu.be/yoCcKYJ7hDI)

On the left is an account that was heavily skewed on purpose, towards the more
conservative group while on the right is what a regular, unlogged in user
would see.

A regular user would have no idea of such an event going on while the user on
the left would think that this event was engulfing the planet based on the
sheer amount of noise being generated.

For users on the left, it would be near impossible to penetrate the noise,
based on retweets and likes, short of a tweet being passed around for users to
jeer at. A literal bubble in that sense.

The sad part is that a great number of people from both sides seemingly had a
lot in common without realising it. Unfortunately they had no visibility of
the "others" short of going out of their way to meet people and talk with them
one on one.

As we all know, it's easier to just label a foreign group and pretend we're
objectively right.

Anyway, that's just my experience with filter bubbles anyway. Hopefully you
found it interesting.

~~~
kochikame
Your comment put me in mind of the "get Pao out" hate campaign at Reddit a few
years back. At its peak, its most incendiary, bile-spewing peak, if you were
not looking at the standard "all" front page you would have had no idea it was
even happening at all.

With "all" as your default page, it was literally full of it, maybe your top
two pages just entirely anti-Pao memes etc.

The difference was so stark it was hard to believe I was even using the same
Reddit as these people

~~~
cableshaft
I miss most Reddit garbage now that I no longer go to the front page. I mainly
stick to a few subreddits now, like r/boardgames, and the moderators actively
keep that stuff out since it has nothing to do with the subject. I think I saw
a little of the Pao stuff back then, but I think I saw it from other sites,
like Kotaku.

------
jorgesborges
This is just tangential personal reflection but I feel like at every stage in
my life I've been in some kind of bubble. Bubbles come and go depending on my
environment and life experience. Being situated on a university campus, mostly
insulated from the concerns of the real world and free to exercise the
curiosities of youth -- that was probably my first big bubble. I had no access
to or understanding of the concerns of most people working to make a living or
raising families. Similarly I can think of periods of time when I was in a bad
relationship, or stuck at a menial job. My day-to-day experience constitutes a
filter bubble, and I don't even think it's good or bad. I feel like the media
bubbles under discussion are symptomatic of a larger cultural malady in which
our experience, our own personal bubbles, are so confused and impoverished
that we jump at any screen or soundbite just to have some medium through which
to experience anything.

------
davidivadavid
I wonder if anyone is banking on a reversal of that perception of "filter
bubbles"?

It seems to me that creating "filter bubbles" not only should be the goal of
social networks, but that it's a desirable goal.

Obviously, someone will have to come up with better branding to wash off the
stink from that term, but the underlying concept is what people fundamentally
want, and it's here to stay.

Facebook recently changed their vision statement to talk about making
communities more tightly-knit, and so on. This can only be done by curating
content and limiting information to stuff that attracts people together and
makes them feel at home.

People have limited time and attention. Dunbar's number imposes constraints on
how much data/people they can keep up with. And people want that circle to be
as pleasant an experience as possible.

I'll be the first to make that bet if no one else has: the social network that
will displace Facebook will displace it because it will embrace filter
bubbles, not "solve" them as if they were a problem.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
> It seems to me that creating "filter bubbles" not only should be the goal of
> social networks, but that it's a desirable goal.

The reason people come to that conclusion is this:

[http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-
rage/](http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage/)

If you show people things from other tribes, the reasonable stuff the other
tribe has to say gets buried under the epic war both sides are thrust into as
soon as anyone says anything recursively controversial.

The problem we have now is that existing networks profit from showing you
_only_ that portion of what the other tribe has to say, because it's what
increases "engagement" (i.e. time spent fighting/arguing on the internet).

What would be desirable would be to do the exact opposite -- bury the
toxoplasma but still show the material from other tribes that isn't virally
outrage-generating.

That may not maximize number of hours spent per user, but if people like it
more, it could maximize total number of users, which is how you build network
effects -- and that's the hardest thing for a new network to do.

It would also presumably benefit things like mutual understanding, unity and
general happiness.

~~~
davidivadavid
Yeah, I understand the mechanics for the way the bubbles form, and how
engagement-driven networks can skew their composition.

The more relevant SSC article for me when it comes to that subject is this
one: [http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/06/07/archipelago-and-
atomic-...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/06/07/archipelago-and-atomic-
communitarianism/)

~~~
AnthonyMouse
The distinction with archipelagos is that you have to be able to choose
between them, at which point you're now talking about communities rather than
filter bubbles. And communities are good, but in this context they're
fractional. A community for talking about software development is useful, but
those people are eligible to go to the polls on election day and still need
somewhere to learn about immigration and criminal justice reform and taxes.
Ideally from more than one side.

~~~
davidivadavid
I don't really disagree with any of that and I'm not sure how that's a
rebuttal.

I think they can be complementary. "Filter bubbles" work as the discovery part
that guides you toward the best communities (from your POV) and also gives
directional information about their boundaries.

If people are interested in learning about immigration and criminal justice
reform and taxes, those topics will be amply covered in the community formed
around their "filter bubble."

If your point is that everyone should be interested in those topics, I think
you're making a different point that is much harder to argue.

------
colordrops
An anecdote: When Bush Sr. died, I saw ~30 different comments and tweets about
how sick they were of the constant barrage of praise for whom they surmised to
be a war criminal, and yet I did not see one single bit of positive words
spoken about him. It was splash of cold water awakening me to the depth of my
filter bubble.

~~~
nyolfen
i liked douthat’s editorial even without any particular personal
sentimentality for wasps: [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/05/opinion/george-
bush-wasps...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/05/opinion/george-bush-
wasps.html)

------
JohnJamesRambo
My parents are completely in a Fox News bubble and so are lots of other people
unfortunately. It changed their views completely. Prior to Fox News they were
reasonable humans that saw things in a rounded way and that eroded upon
repeated exposure to it. I wish they had never gotten cable.

~~~
wincy
I have two sets of grandparents, one is constantly angry and watching Fox
News, and the others are angry and watching CNN. Neither will accept any sort
of news story from a source that’s not “unbiased”, which means seems to mean
supports their side. It’s really frustrating.

~~~
EGreg
Put em at the same table at dinner!

Maybe they can duke it out and come to a conclusion.

I find watching biased news from both sides gives me more info than “moderate”
lukewarm reporting. Biased sources tend to make stronger arguments for their
narratives and omit less “inconvenient” details of the other side.

Also a good way to approach any world conflict or propaganda.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
> I find watching biased news from both sides gives me more info than
> “moderate” lukewarm reporting. Biased sources tend to make stronger
> arguments for their narratives and omit less “inconvenient” details of the
> other side.

Different parties are right about different things.

For example, Trump is unfairly maligned on trade. The tariffs on China are
extremely modest -- we tax domestic producers more than that on net. And
something has to compensate for China purposely tilting the playing field a
hundred different ways. But if you look at left of center media you'd think
the tariffs were destroying the economy, with no data but plenty of anecdotes
from companies whinging about having to pay a little more for goods from
sweatshops in China.

On the other hand, Trump's position on coal is completely indefensible.

Which implies "moderate" isn't a real thing. Saying he's half right on trade
and half right on coal isn't moderation, it's gibberish. He's mostly right on
trade and entirely wrong on coal. Sawing the baby in half every time is no
better than uncritically believing one side over the other.

The trouble is the mainstream sources, especially on cable, are still terrible
-- even the ones with an obvious affiliation frequently don't present the best
argument for their positions because their goal is to lather up the base and
generate ratings rather than actually inform anyone.

And both sides ignore anything that isn't politically expedient. They never
really go after the banks, the insurance companies, government contractors or
employees -- or if they do it's a populist call to riot rather than any kind
of principled proposal to make specific changes.

The best thing to do is to rely on domain experts and primary sources, which
are much easier to access now that most everything is on the internet, but
it's still more time consuming than most people are going to be able to commit
to. Which is maybe why everything is such a mess.

It seems like we need journalists with an opinion but not a party.

~~~
Applejinx
Well, that depends: what you see as left of center media might actually be
rather centrist along some axes. To be frothing at the mouth in rage at
tariffs identifies you as a globalist thinker of some 'neo' persuasion:
neocon, or neoliberal. Either way, though you may disagree sharply on social
issues you've got a shared committment to frictionless commerce over national
boundaries in the belief that this will cause all the world to prosper (by all
the world, you might mean 'the richest individuals and companies in any given
country')

So, if that's your agenda, you (a) will hate tariffs whether they're proposed
by Trump or a socialist like Bernie Sanders, and (b) you'll see to it that
things are framed with the perspective that NO PERSON could possibly doubt the
evilness of tariffs and the benevolence of maximally frictionless global
trade.

You might even insist that nobody is actually trapped in a filter bubble about
it, as there is no possibility that anyone can have an intelligent thought
that DOESN'T embrace ultimately free trade. This position automatically
forbids thinking about externalities or epiphenomena that arise from this
embracing of trade across the widest possible market.

Hell, even the idea of 'market' is a filter bubble. Certainly the phrase
'Trump is unfairly maligned' used for any reason, is a filter bubble. I myself
have to resist the tendency to react negatively just because of the
association with the man, and would instead say: nah, he is fairly maligned
because he's not approaching an 'anti-globalist' position for any constructive
reason. In no way is he addressing the underlying mechanisms of the problem,
he's just throwing sand in the gears. If it's a mechanism causing catastrophic
damage, that alone might seem good, but we're gonna need better answers than
just breaking stuff.

I would prefer to see something like unionization or communism break the
ability to conduct labor arbitrage (not as an ultimate final goal, but as a
counter-force to capital's ability to have things all its own way), but I do
not think that's what Trump is up to. If he was, I'd say he was unfairly
maligned too. Since he's not, I consider him fairly maligned .

~~~
AnthonyMouse
> I would prefer to see something like unionization or communism break the
> ability to conduct labor arbitrage (not as an ultimate final goal, but as a
> counter-force to capital's ability to have things all its own way), but I do
> not think that's what Trump is up to. If he was, I'd say he was unfairly
> maligned too. Since he's not, I consider him fairly maligned .

You seem to be saying that Trump has an anti-globalist position, which is
reasonable for a number of reasons, but he should still be maligned _because
he is not a communist_. Is that actually what you're saying, or am I
misreading it?

------
tarboreus
This article is attacking a strawman, defining filter bubble extremely
narrowly.

------
thinkingemote
I am not sure what I did with my filter bubble. Did I make it stronger or
weaker, larger or smaller?

The polarisation on twitter and Facebook after Brexit and the two years before
and after the US election saw the losing tribe write off the other half as
evil, selfish, needing to be re-educated, that democracy was over and a strong
left hand was needed and that the free press needed regulation.

These were views by some of you, CTO level educated SV technologists.

I pointed out that the opposition wasn't evil, democracy was still valid, and
mainly i pointed out how they were blinkered. Some people took it personally.
Now they are not in my filter bubble. Worth saying that the winning tribalism
was not in my filter bubble at any point.

My bubble has less tribalism than before but it's also less large.

~~~
nickthemagicman
How does one know when they're in a filter bubble?

------
lucideer
This is a pretty pointless and contentless article.

As others have pointed out, it's attacking a strawman, so the point isn't even
relevant. But even if it were, what's the conclusion? There's a graph of
people's trust in media, and some quotes from DDG's marketing—neither of which
seem relevant to the central point.

> _are filter bubbles really the problem here? Danny Sullivan [...] argues
> fairly persuasively that they’re not because even DuckDuckGo users see
> different results._

What is this sentence? Argues conclusively what? If anything, it supports the
thesis that they exist (by this article's awkward definition), since they also
pervade even DDG.

------
im3w1l
In my experience the same people that complain about filter bubbles also want
offensive content gone. It seems the underlying motivation is just "show more
of my beliefs less of theirs".

------
fareesh
In my experience there are some good tests for this on various noteworthy
political events in recent times.

For example if you think that President Trump gave a press conference in which
he referred to neo Nazis as very fine people, you are in a bubble because the
context and quote are the exact opposite which he later clarifies when asked
by the reporter, saying "I'm not talking about the Neo Nazis".

If you believe that Hillary Clinton sold 20% of the USA's uranium to Russia in
exchange for donations then you are in a bubble because that characterization
is missing several key pieces of information.

People treat future events based on what they have preconceived in these
erroneous ways. The media distorts something with a tiny grain of truth into a
narrative, and that narrative is what remains as a criteria for filtering
future information.

When you interact with ideologically entrenched folks, you can easily poke
holes using examples like this. If they are reasonable they will recognize
what has happened to them. If not reasonable, there will be cognitive
dissonance and excuses as to why their belief is still right. The latter are
not worth engaging with further because it's an uphill battle that will likely
yield no progress.

Media organizations like CNN and Fox News have become brazen in this regard.
Recently CNN had a participant on a panel masquerading as a Trump voter, who
was revealed to have a YouTube channel that espoused the exact opposite view.
On a similar panel, key parts of answers on voter fraud were edited out of the
final broadcast to make the respondent look uninformed, when they had, in
fact, answered the question citing sources and narrating a great deal of
information.

Market forces have moved the keepers of the "Gated institutional narrative"
further towards the new clickbait, ideological, tabloid brand of journalism,
and we are all worse off for it.

------
Johnny555
Just because people may visit other news sources, they can still be in a
Facebook filter bubble where everyone in their newsfeed thinks just like them.

At least, that's how my facebook newsfeed looks, most of my Facebook
friends/family have similar political views as me, so my news feed is full of
stories and comments backing up my own political views. So even if I read
opposing viewpoints in other news sites, my newsfeed still reinforces that
those opposing viewpoints are invalid, and it makes it seem like everyone
agrees with me.

------
fouc
The author seems to miss the point of filter bubbles.

There's a known cognitive bias where people tend to seek out information that
mainly validates their existing views. Filter bubbles become a major enabler
of that, allowing them to develop horse blinders to reality. Filter bubbles
can lead people down into more extremist views that don't mesh with reality,
rather than giving them exposure to counterarguments and allowing them to
develop a more well-rounded view.

------
freeflight
I wonder how one would go about actually quantifying any of this?

The article tries to use two different studies to do this, but this approach
seems flawed for the very simple reason that participants are not the same
across both studies.

Imho this whole problem is very comparable to being biased in general. We are
all biased in some way or another and I like to think most of us are aware of
this reality.

But being aware of it does not simply translate to being aware of the full
extent of the biases or lead to an outcome where the bias is "negated", if it
is as easy as that, then barely anybody should be biased.

In a way, it's like trying to define what goes on inside a blind spot, which
by definition, is kinda impossible: If you'd be aware of your blind spot, it
wouldn't be a blind spot anymore.

I see the same problem with "filter bubbles", which in a way are just systemic
biases very comparable how different social circles have different Overton
windows. Most of these seem not to be forced upon people but are rather
consequences of choices made based on personal biases/the Overton window often
heavily influenced by in ones peer groups.

While one might be aware of these choices, and how one reasoned them, that
does not entail knowledge about the reality of other, maybe equally valid,
choices. In that context, a lot of this feels more like a philosophical
problem than an actual social one. People will, for the most part, rationalize
their own choices as the "most valid ones".

If they wouldn't, then they wouldn't have made those choices because only very
few people make irrational choices on purpose for the sake of acting
irrational.

~~~
bad_user
>> “ _The article tries to use two different studies to do this, but this
approach seems flawed for the very simple reason that participants are not the
same across both studies._ ”

That’s not a valid requirement.

In fact using the same participants in multiple studies biases the results.

------
kijin
> _Few people are in complete filter bubbles in which they only consume, say,
> Fox News_

Sure, if you only want to count "complete" filter bubbles in which 100% of
your search results come from a single source.

Averaged over millions of people and billions of searches, however, even a 10%
bias is likely to have a measurable effect.

People don't get pushed over to one side of a partisan issue overnight. Like a
pollutant in your drinking water, it takes a long time of constant exposure to
unbalanced news for the subtle biases to seep into your brain and change how
you see the world.

~~~
mrweasel
Also one would assume that placing you 100% in one "bubble" would be bad for
business. Sites wants to see if you need/can be pushed into yet unknown areas
of interest.

But sure, no one is actually trapped in a filter bubble. If you're aware that
you're in a bubble, then it because much easier to escape. The problem is that
most people aren't aware that they aren't seen all sides of an issue.

------
willio58
This is not what’s filter bubble is, it’s a subset of the broader idea.

------
coldtea
> _We’re not trapped in filter bubbles, but we like to act as if we are. Few
> people are in complete filter bubbles in which they only consume, say, Fox
> News, Matt Grossmann writes in a new report for Knight_

That's irrelevant. It's enough that their biases are regularly reinforced by
the sources they follow (something modern social media and news aggregators
make extremely easy), they don't have to "only consume" their side of the
story.

------
stakhanov
Regarding the point about filter bubbling in DuckDuckGo: My guess would be
that it's not a trivial problem for them to undo the filter bubbling that
their search providers are doing. But, I think if three people were to hit the
"refresh" button 10 times on the same query, then the variation seen by one
single person is probably similar to the variation seen across different
people running the same query.

------
newsgremlin
Perhaps not entirely, but do filter bubbles become an issue when an individual
is isolated in the same community for most of their life? I've slowly traveled
outwards from my hometown of 2000~ people to now living in a city of 300k+,
I've been to a few places between then and now but while my internet bubble
has always been there, it hasn't consumed me.

------
joncrane
Ironically, Pandora's whole point is to create the musical equivalent of
filter bubbles, and it's really cool.

~~~
chrisco255
Yeah, I use Pandora when I want repetition and I use Spotify to discover new
music or see what my friends are listening to.

------
jccalhoun
This article doesn't really have a lot of meat to it.

Despite that, I am very skeptical of the filter bubble idea and especially as
it relates to customized internet search results. I found Eli Pariser's book
to be very unconvincing. It is full of qualifiers like "might," "could," and
"may" and few hard facts.

To a degree we have always been in some kind of bubble because we aren't
omniscient. Before electronic media, our knowledge of things outside our
immediate circle was very limited. Was that a filter bubble? During the heyday
of newspapers when a city had multiple newspapers there would be explicitly
liberal and conservative newspapers (growing up my hometown newspaper was the
Republican!)

I feel like now I know a lot more about people who disagree with me than I
ever did. I may not understand them but I know that Trump supporters, flat
earthers, creationists, anti-vaxers, and people who care about sports all
exist.

------
pessimizer
The idea that people who report being intensely allied to particular political
parties would automatically be the people who we should be most concerned
about being in filter bubbles is bizarre, and is part of a broader media
narrative that all opinions right or left of the NYT and WaPo editorial pages
are the result of manipulation. This seems like one of a cluster of centrist
articles attempting to debunk this idea, specifically targeted at Republican
bleating about tech-media companies hiding left-wing bias behind claims that
they have objective algorithms that have no particular political content.

They're twisting the finding, culled from mashing together a number of studies
(not any particular study) and summarized in a whitepaper, that find when you
monitor the people who self-report the most partisan consumption of news, it
turns out that they actually read a lot of different sources. In other words,
they've discovered that the most angry readers of news spend as much time
hate-reading as reading outlets that they agree with.

Interesting finding by itself. Instead of reporting that, though, they
transform the group that most self-reports being in _what the authors would
call a filter bubble_ (i.e. they report only watching Maddow or only watching
Fox) into the group _most likely in a filter bubble_ , they find that group to
not be in a filter bubble, then they declare the non-existence of filter
bubbles. It's really garbled logic.

I'd submit that the people most likely to be affected by a filter bubble would
be the people who read political news the least, and where the few examples of
what they look up would create a skewed algorithmic perception of their
interests. I'd further submit that those people would far outnumber the
extreme party partisans, but their votes would count equally, so the fact that
extreme partisans who are already absolutely sure how they will vote are not
trapped in filter bubbles is of far less importance than the people who are
not sure about how they will vote, and are affected by new information.

~~~
Nasrudith
To be frank it seems like old media is increasingly wearing its envy on their
sleeve relatively recently. They tried ignoring them at first. then they tried
integrating where after ignoring everything on the internet suddenly leaping
onto twitter. Then when that doesn't work they started getting angry and
trying to make tech the new villain for everything. Like claiming that
outright fabricated news for an agenda started with them - no just look at
Hearst for one.

There is the incredibly obvious 'tech-lash' astroturfed push and trying to
invoke antitrust - all while dutifully ignoring the actual monopolies and
media conglomeration. And the Sinclair 'hive-mind' dystopian propaganda
pushing that received far less attention than Facebook selling ads.

------
lkdjjdjjjdskjd
Let's be honest: without filter bubbles, (social) media would be pretty much
unbearable.

------
rwj
Beyond the filter bubble, I've noticed that a lot media spends most of their
time in personal attacks, and very little time discussing the substance of any
issue. Even when the discussion actually contains any substance, authors
cannot refrain from poisoning the well. It isn't Person A believes ..., and
Person B points to research ..., it is Left-wing ideologue idiot Person A
believes crazy idea ...and well-respected patriot Person B point to research
... Both left and right partisan authors are using this style.

I raise this point in a discussion about filter bubbles since I'm suspect the
two aspects are self-reinforcing.

------
kristianc
There's an interesting phenomenon here in the UK where a lot of the quality
journalism on the right is behind a paywall, whereas a lot of the quality
journalism on the left is ad-funded and freely available. I can see that being
a potential amplifier of 'filter bubbles'.

~~~
thecanman
Are your "Rights" and "Lefts" the same as ours in the US? I think it can all
vary, but it would provide interesting context. Is the UK's right more closely
aligned with the House of Lords or the like?

~~~
kristianc
They’re fairly similar - though the whole political spectrum is shifted to the
left.

The British Conservative Party is pro free market and low tax but socially
liberal, with an Atlanticist foreign policy, and is in favor of single payer
health care.

The Labour Party is pro government intervention, state planning and
redistributive taxes, less sceptical about regulation and has greater historic
ties with Europe than with the US. It’s long described itself as a socialist
party.

The House of Lords is said to be a house of experts who have been chosen
because of their specialist knowledge. Because it is unelected and made up of
political appointees, it’s composition can change over time.

There are however limits to what the Lords can actually do to block
legislation, so it differs from the Senate. Bills can only be proposed in the
House of Commons (so not like the US where either house can propose).

------
karmasimida
For self-victimization, apparently.

