4 ms·
The thing about this is that the "Filter Bubble" isn't actually new. It has existed as long as mass-media has. Technology may well be making the phenomenon wo
by tgflynn 15y ago
The thing about this is that the "Filter Bubble" isn't actually new. It has existed as long as mass-media has. Technology may well be making the phenomenon worse, perhaps to the point of creating something qualitatively different from what has been seen in the past, but anyone who thinks that the media has ever provided an accurate reflection of actual reality is horribly mistaken.
In fact its difficult to see how the media ever could provide such a reflection. Actual reality is very boring, reading about it doesn't interest people, because the brain has its own filters which lead us to only be interested in that which we find new or surprising.
Unfortunately providing people with information which appeals to them (which is what the media has always done, with or without algorithms) will invariably distort their own sense of reality, just as would training a probabilistic model only on outliers.
- JoeAltmaier 15y agoMany markets had more than one media outlet. You could choose to read other opinions. With everybody bubbling, that options is disappearing.
- kijin 15y agoYes, it happens in traditional media too, albeit more crudely. After all, all of the incentives are already there. Run stories about rare but terrible crimes -> more people watch your news -> ad revenue goes up -> run more stories about even rarer but more terrible crimes -> even more viewers -> wash, rinse, repeat -> everyone thinks the govt should be "tough on crimes" even though our society is the safest ever.
- mindslight 15y agoI totally agree about the pervasive distortion by mass media, but don't you think there's a fundamental difference between most everybody being subject to the same reality distortion versus different bubbles for individual people? Especially when those individual bubbles are completely opaque to the people trapped in them? It's easy to tune out most of the bias of mass-market broadcast culture, but much harder to be aware of what's being pumped to you specifically. If a company is going to tailor their behavior for what I "like", the least they can do is be up front about it and provide a transparent way to change those alleged "preferences".