
Ask HN: Do you feel like you're in a filter bubble? - m52go
I mainly browse HN &amp; Twitter for news. Lately, while HN is still my best source of new content, I feel like I&#x27;m seeing the same ideas over and over again.<p>Can anyone relate? What do you do to break out of it?
======
klaustopher
I had exactly that feeling a while ago. I was looking at HN, lobste.rs,
reddit, my tech-news-filled RSS reader at least hourly. My Twitter timeline
was packed with tech people, and my podcatcher was subscribed to 50 or so tech
podcasts.

This way, I always heard about the newest scandals, *-gates, dramas, etc and I
spent a lot of energy and time thinking about them, discussing them with
people on Twitter. I let every little piece of drama get to me. I felt
exhausted. I felt angry most of the time. I was frustrated.

So, I just stopped. No HN, deleted my Twitter account, didn't attend any tech
related event. I unsubscribed from most of the podcasts I was listening to,
added some about the things that are going on in the world or other topics
that interest me. Or simply didn't listen to anything at all. When I was
walking home from work, listening to nature and interacting with the people
around me helped so much getting out of this "oh my gosh, there's so much
going on in the tech world, I cant' miss out on anything..." feeling. I also
(re)started some hobbies that involved me getting away from the computer.
Started building and flying multicopter/drone (well, ok, this is somewhat tech
related, but not sitting in front of the notebook all the time), cycling,
taking long walks, geocaching, ...

I started feeling better and I think that I found a good mixture of "both
worlds". I usually look at the top page of HN once a day (before I was
constantly refreshing the newest-section), have a new Twitter with a good
mixture of tech- and non-tech-people. And I usually stay away from the
computer in my free-time.

I don't feel like I'm missing anything. The important topics will reach me
eventually (maybe through colleagues). So I might not be on the forefront of
everything that's going on. But who really needs this? I thought, I did. Now I
know, I don't.

edit: Added a sentence about the hobbies that I forgot to put there.

~~~
didsomeonesay

      This way, I always heard about the newest scandals, 
      *-gates, dramas, etc and I spent a lot of energy and time 
      thinking about them, discussing them with people on 
      Twitter. I let every little piece of drama get to me. I 
      felt exhausted. I felt angry most of the time. I was 
      frustrated.
    

It's like regular news all over again!

~~~
klaustopher
Yeah, it's the same about the "real-world-news". I watch the news once a day
on TV (in Germany, there's the really good "Tagesschau." 15 minute round-up of
what happened during the day on public television), and read a weekly news
paper. No breaking-news sites, no news-outlets in my RSS reader. And I still
feel well-informed.

~~~
RyanMcGreal
Related:

[http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews](http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews)

------
Haul4ss
Get off the internet and spend some time outdoors.

It's so easy to sit in a little digital universe that you are in the center
of. You have to consciously move yourself out of that comfort zone.

Ride public transportation and strike up conversations with people. Go for a
hike. Volunteer at the library. Sign up for a 5K race.

If you are in a filter bubble, it is of your own choosing, and you need to
loosen the filter to let more things in.

~~~
mbillie1
Not to mention that daily exercise will improve your overall happiness /
mental health noticeably. Run, bike, find a rock climbing gym and learn how to
rock climb, anything. It is important in so many ways for people like software
developers who have highly mentally stressful but physically sedentary jobs to
do something physically active and not involving a screen, and to do it daily.
Your quality of life will improve exponentially.

~~~
arcticfox
Amusingly, these are some of the ideas that are surely posted constantly as
part of OP's filter bubble. Because, of course, they are good suggestions.

------
27182818284
These were helpful for me and may or may not be helpful for you:

Mix in editorialized content. Read the New York Times or another major, old
publication rather than only sites that have user-generated and user-moderated
content. There are certain things that will get upvotes all the time on
Reddit, etc.

Similarly, read blogs that are outside your normal areas. For example, if
you're into tech and work in tech, read the
[http://www.scotusblog.com/](http://www.scotusblog.com/)

Read new science fiction from the library, not the same user-generated
recommendations from Reddit and HN. Anthologies of short stories are great for
rebooting my brain with new ideas. Worms using tunnels in ice to form a sort
of neural network over millions of years? Drag racing aliens? Tattoos that
administer medicine?

Also with that, just pull random books off your local library's shelf from
time to time. A book about the history of Target? A book about socialism and
electricity? Why not?

~~~
m52go
The serendipity of book browsing is something I find very underrated. I do
exactly that, in real life, but can't find a way to do it properly (and
enjoyably) online.

------
Red_Tarsius
99% of my browsing is gmail (work), HN (shared values, it makes me feel less
lonely) and boardgamegeek. Daily news are junk food for your brain: highly
addictive and unhealthy.

> _What do you do to break out of it?_

imho the solution is not _more_ news. Take a break from news sources. I don't
use facebook anymore, since I realized it was a major source of unhappiness.

You could try to engage your brain with different inputs, like books. After
cutting down my browsing habits, I have been reading tons of ebooks, from
front to cover.

~~~
untog
Not to pick on you (too much?) but a combination of coming to HN because of
"shared values" and ignoring daily news sites because they're "unhealthy"
doesn't sounds great to me.

HN is very much a bubble. Not just that it's tech news based, but it's also
very geographically centered around Silicon Valley and economically centered
around the affluent.

To pick a topical example, I'd say that every American ought to know what is
going on in Baltimore right now - HN is most definitely not the place to get
the full view of a topic like that. And daily news sites don't _just_ do daily
news - by example, the Baltimore Sun has a great, in-depth piece that is
directly relevant to what's going on right now:

[http://data.baltimoresun.com/news/police-
settlements/](http://data.baltimoresun.com/news/police-settlements/)

~~~
igravious
Or US-centric.

A fair proportion of HN-ers are not from the States and we are not interested
in local US news. Really, we're not.

~~~
untog
HN is pretty US-centric, though. I get that a significant number of users are
not from the US, but the site is undeniably US-centric - and I say this as a
non-American.

(and just so that we're clear: I'm not suggesting that people should be
talking about Baltimore on HN. I'm saying that they should broaden their
reading sources to include news like Baltimore rather than just relying on HN
for all their reading)

------
thenomad
Yes. It's actually one of my major concerns about 21st-century life: the
filter bubble effect promotes extremism in all issues and breaks down
consensus.

I'm working on a couple of things to attempt to combat it, but more ideas
would be very, very, __very __welcome.

~~~
m52go
Me too. That's why I made this post, but I didn't include any details because
I just wanted honest opinions.

Since your profile invites pings, I'll ping you. I'm interested to learn about
your approach!

~~~
thenomad
Very interested to hear from you too! Looking forward to the email.

------
derrida
Read books. [1]

Go to pub for conversation.

Don't listen to normative cunts like me.

rm -rf / that shit and get out there.

[1] EVIDENCE IN WHICH I PRESENT THE NOVEL AND FAR FETCHED IDEA THAT BOOKS ARE
GOOD (tm): Last night I read some shitty paperback about some traveler
following the route of Marco Polo through Afghanistan, written for a 1980's
audience. Cool, I get to find out what Iran / Afghanistan / Pakistan was like
in the 1980's & what Marco Polo thought about the 3 wise men & the possibility
of how this related to a myth in Zoroastrianism & that there was a parallel
myth in a small town in Iran, and that Mathew may have been writing for a
Zoroastrian audience, which presented the interesting idea that Jesus may have
been a prophet of the Zoroastrians in a way that it was said he was for the
Jews. I'm not religious or anything, it's just interesting.

~~~
brickcap
Sounds great! what's the name of the book?

~~~
derrida
Oh that one was "In Xanadu" \- William Dalrymple.

I should probably revise "some shitty paperback", what I mean is, I picked it
up for $2, creased and it's a "travel writing" genre page turner. Time reading
it has been time well spent :)

~~~
brickcap
Thanks for letting me know :) Yeah he is a good writer. I bought his book "The
last Mughal" last year but haven't managed to read it yet. I'll also keep an
eye out for "In Xandu"

------
beat
What does your social life look like? Do you have a truly diverse collection
of friends, or just a handful of people who are like you in terms of race,
gender, age, profession, income, hobbies, etc?

News sources are just a symptom. If you don't have a diverse social life,
friends and peers who live and think differently from you, you won't have a
_why_ when encountering new ideas and information. You won't have the
perspective of someone who lives what you just encountered. You'll lack
perspective. Without perspective, it's easy to reject and ignore things that
contradict what's already in your bubble.

------
derpderple
Make stuff, build stuff. Create a mental disconnection between new stuff you
are learning, and stuff you have learned. Avoid making analogies. Consider
that the things you must learn now, are challenges that you can only learn
about inwardly. What I mean by that is, disconnect from the hive mind. Make an
effort to see the difference. When you were in school, you had to put effort
in to learn in a specific way. That way to learn may not be correct forever.
Also, learn to live with the knowledge that we are always growing up, no
matter how old we get. Sometimes it's not your teachers, society, mentors,
authorities, or 'stuff' that have the capacity to make you feel different, or
like you are learning something new.

The meme of 'self knowledge' has been viral through the centuries, probably
for a good reason. I struggle with it myself, obviously, always seeking the
correct explanation, never certain whether I've found it, whether others have
found it too.

I like to pretend my brain is a machine designed to process information and it
auto-optimizes the way it stores that information. This may not help, but
maybe what you have to do is feel like you have to fight your mind to gain
control over it, and once you have it, you might be able to destroy the auto-
pattern construction mechanic, or at least make yourself more skeptical of it,
in that it doesn't see the pattern meaning directly, but sees how it is
constructed through a process you designed a long time ago.

~~~
CPLX
But what do you do if you keep seeing the same "make stuff, build stuff" idea
over and over again?

~~~
derpderple
Do you understand the difference between choosing to create a connection
between the memory and the present observation?

I think you have to examine what you mean by 'ideas'. If you already know the
answer, then does that not demonstrate to you why the pattern continues to
repeat?

~~~
CPLX
That's some good weed huh.

~~~
derpderple
Nope, just studying logic, classical philosophy, and math

------
ufmace
You have to aggressively seek out opinions and viewpoints that you disagree
with. Even if - especially if - they make you feel uncomfortable and annoyed.
Read all of the opinions that people say are garbage, make them sick, get
downvoted, etc. Whatever your ideology is, find and read as much content as
you can from the other side.

You may feel especially weird if you intentionally spend a month or two in an
artificially created filter bubble opposite to the ideology you hold now.
Feeling anti-cop after the most recent string of incidents, for example? Try
making an effort to ignore anything critical of the police and read only
sources from or sympathetic to the police for a month or two - you might be
very surprised how much this changes your point of view, and find yourself in
a better position to see the full picture of an issue.

Have faith that if an opinion really is nonsense, you will be able to realize
that on your own, without taking somebody else's word for it. On the other
hand, you might find that yourself and the people you agreed with are wrong,
or biased, or missing an important perspective.

------
thaumaturgy
> _I feel like I 'm seeing the same ideas over and over again._

You are. I run a small MSP, we work with end-users all day long, small and
medium-sized businesses and home users alike. The recurring topics on HN are
completely irrelevant to them. Very few new services or products on HN --
maybe a couple per year -- are something we can recommend to them. GoDaddy,
Dreamhost, Quickbooks, and Microsoft Office still rule their world. The only
YC product that has become ubiquitous in their lives is Dropbox. HN tech
topics often reflect small pockets of bleeding-edge techies talking to
eachother.

Also, a lot of the opinions expressed in software development here are the
diametric opposite of what users want. "Move fast and break things" \-- users
hate that. "Release early, release often" \-- users _really_ hate that. "Don't
optimize" \-- users are sick of that, we hear about that just about every day,
usually in the form of, "why should I bother getting a faster computer, it
will still feel slow".

Occasionally I try to relay users' opinions back to software developers and
usually it doesn't go over very well. My life is a lot easier if I don't
communicate with software developers, and instead tell users that software
developers aren't an easy group to work with.

> _What do you do to break out of it?_

I use a custom news reader that helps me stay off HN. I focus on building
things and working with users. I spend more time out in the world, instead of
reading about it. I remind myself that news is actually not very valuable,
that most of the things I read about aren't anything I can take any action on
or will impact me directly.

I haven't owned a television in years and have never been a cable television
subscriber, and when I get a glimpse of TV at the gym or restaurant or
someone's house or elsewhere, it doesn't look like something I want. Online
news is gradually falling into the same bucket for me.

------
matthewrhoden1
I see a lot of comments saying to go outside. Not a bad idea, but I think you
were looking for new ideas. Ways to be innovative. If that's what you meant, I
found one new way of thinking is finding a hobby or interest and pursuing it
for a while. If it's ideas for software you want to write so you can make
money, then you cross the two (your hobby and your job skills) with
"hopefully" a fun project as a result. This is one of many routes to finding
market niches. If it's no longer interesting to you, move on to your next
item. Most people have a bucket list anyways, so I think it's a good practice
for the sake of your feeling of life fulfillment.

~~~
m52go
Yeah, thanks. That's what I was getting at. Going outside without changing my
information environment wouldn't help me escape the filter bubble.

Thanks for the ideas.

------
Strilanc
Yes. Because of reading [1].

1: [http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-
anything...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything-
except-the-outgroup/)

------
lmm
I don't feel like it's a filter bubble, or if it is, it's a society-wide one.
There are certain political questions where I feel like it's unacceptable to
express particular views, but that seems to be the case everywhere.

Non-tech hobbies have helped me meet people from a wide variety of classes,
which means I have at least some exposure to a variety of viewpoints. It's
worth getting out and off the internet every so often.

~~~
beat
In America, you can express whatever political views you want. Of course, you
might wind up with most people thinking you're an asshole for it.

If you express your opinion and almost everyone thinks you're an asshole, then
you're either a genius, or an asshole.

~~~
lmm
What about if a small proportion of people think you're an asshole, but
they're enough to get you fired?

~~~
soylentcola
The flip side is that if you only discuss controversial opinions with people
who agree, congrats! You're in the bubble again.

Still, whenever I do run across an online or offline community where people
are capable of civil debate and discussion without getting all red-faced, it
can be incredibly valuable. It's how I've refined or changed many of my
opinions as I got more info and perhaps I've informed the opinions of some
other people as well.

------
serve_yay
I find that people associated with things I'm interested in often have
terrible things to say about different things I'm interested in. (For example
I come across a lot of hostile anti-HN sentiment at conferences and among
coworkers, HN pretty much hates John Gruber, etc)

I'm not sure what that's a sign of, exactly, but I feel like if it were a
filter bubble there would be less of that.

------
tjradcliffe
The suggestions here to track down a diversity of sources are good, but I'm
increasingly finding that as soon as I've read a source for a while I come to
recognize that it is living inside a filter bubble of its own and start
discounting a lot of what I'm reading.

The only places I can stick with are the large, old, mainstream media sites:
BBC, the Atlantic, the National Post (in Canada). Each of them has biases and
a definite editorial policy, but they are all still making some kind of
attempt to be objective about the news they choose to report, where by
"objective" I mean "they don't ignore obvious facts, flat-out lie about stuff,
or deliberately cast stories in terms of abstractions that make them look like
something completely different from the way they'd look if you focus on the
concretes." They also tend to provide background pieces to major stories that
look at multiple perspectives on them.

These organizations all have some notion that what they are doing involves
helping their readers understand their world. Most other places see their
mission primarily in terms of either entertainment or influence.

Maybe I'm just old, but keeping those sources for news and following a
diversity of people--including a number of mainstream media print reporters
and several academics, particularly economists--on Twitter to get personal
views of events and ideas seems to be working OK.

With regard to "new content", there are only a few new ideas in the world.
Every startup story on HN is going to have some similarities. Every science
story likewise. Tech stories even moreso. Our ability to communicate has
increased by... how much? A million-fold?... in the past thirty years, but our
ability to find things to say has stayed the same. It follows from this that
most of what we find online is repetition and drivel (including, likely, this
comment).

~~~
guizzy
A suggestion I have to avoid filter in news is to read news directly from news
agencies (Reuters, AP, AFP and the like).

They aren't perfect, but contrarily to newspapers that are incentivised to
pander to their readers, news agencies have a business incentive to be
neutral: they want to be able to sell the same article to all sides of the
issue.

------
guizzy
Very much so.

To try to avoid it, I'm ignoring anything political or opinion based on my
Facebook account. I've added opinion blogs in my RSS reader that are obviously
intelligent and thoughtful but completely infuriatingly different from my own
opinions. Once in a while I read them and try to force myself to keep an open
mind. It's tough.

I'm trying to avoid using Reddit for anything but stuff that relates to
hobbies. Unfortunately a lot of them are starting to get depressingly
political. I might have to cut Reddit off entirely if it keeps up.

I get my news from news agencies. Their stuff is significantly less biased
than newspapers and news blogs.

I'm starting to read more new litterature. Rethreading the same old stuff
that's sure to reinforce my opinions is unhealthy in the long run.

------
captn3m0
I recently subscribed to a lot of tech and non-tech subreddits and
unsubscribed from all the default subreddits (the old ones). I sometimes
browse /r/all for fun, but its working out well for me.

~~~
thenomad
Reddit's a huge filter bubble all of its own, though, with a definite bias in
its userbase.

~~~
m52go
Yeah, that's my exact issue with it. It seems very diverse on the surface, but
its faults become apparent after spending just a little time on it.

------
carrotleads
Growing up we used to wonder as to why our Dad was glued to the Radio or TV...
he was used to watching/listening to news at every possible opportunity..

I realised later it ws no different to my constant refreshes of my favourite
sites.

My dad was a school dropout and I theorised this was his attempt to remain
informed and that gave him a sense of achievement.

I haven't figured out my addiction to the news, maybe I am taking after my
Dad.

I have tried to set limits at it and when I am away from the computer, I have
no problem missing the news but when I am close, self-discipline is my only
answer for now.

------
feybay
Nope, go on 8chan and other controversial sites. You don't have to like what
they say, but you'll get interesting ideas and points of view that people
won't say on mainstream sites like HN and Twitter. Seek out writers and sites
you don't agree with and read stuff that makes you uncomfortable.

"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without
accepting it." \- Aristotle

------
nextw33k
This is all signal to noise ratio, you have to become aware that repetition is
just noise that you need to remove.

Factor down your Internet reading, trim news feeds to no more than 3. The
cream should rise to the top.

Most of all create something; craft beer, a novel, an App, mow the lawn, fix a
squeaking gate. You'll get a clearer head from a menial task and a sense of
something more.

------
jgrahamc
_What do you do to break out of it?_

Read something else? It's not rocket surgery.

Also, read on paper with your phone in your pocket.

~~~
guizzy
It's not that easy. Filtered news is addictive. It's like children's breakfast
cereal with just the candy.

It validates your world views, makes you feel smart for agreeing with all the
other "smart" people. I wouldn't be surprised to hear it triggers the same
positive feedback loops as other psychologically addictive things.

Once you're thoroughly filtered and addicted, opinions that disagree with your
bubbled opinions are painful to read. They feel like agressions.

------
antocv
Pick up a hobby, grow house-plants, flowers and see how good atmosphere you
can create in your place just by playing a botanist.

