This article was published on January 23, 2017

Who’s really to blame for your filter bubble


Who’s really to blame for your filter bubble

There’s a lot being said about the filter bubble – that social media (Facebook, mostly) only shows you what you want to see because you only see the stories that your friends like.

Now I don’t know about you, but on Facebook, I’m just as connected to my family as I am the people I know professionally. And while you’re stuck with the family you have, you’re able to choose your friends.

Most families are psychotic and everybody has that one crazy uncle, yet I’m often surprised by how many opposing opinions I encounter when I check my feed. I’d actually theorize that we actually have less of a filter bubble than that of our parents, who had less of one than their parents.

While my parents are watching the same television programs and reading the same newspaper their entire lives, I might see 30 different news sources from 30 different people in one session of checking my Facebook.

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It’s so easy to blame a medium for everything that’s wrong with the world – but take a closer look and you might just see things are a bit more subtle than you think…. Unless you prefer to keep yourself locked away in your own filter bubble of assumptions.


This is my introduction text for last week’s issue of our TNW Weekly update. You can read the whole newsletter here, or sign up to receive your own copy. 

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