[resu_nimda]

Google and Facebook also use your data as input for increasingly sophisticated AI algorithms that put you in a filter bubble — an alternate digital universe that controls what you see in their products, based on what their algorithms think you are most likely to click on. These echo chambers distort people's reality, creating a myriad of unintended consequences such as increasing societal polarization.

How is this any different from the pre- or sans-Google and Facebook world? People have always lived in bubbles, always been funneled down a particular path by their experiential influences. Without Google or Facebook, if you were a white supremacist, it’s probably because you were influenced by white supremacists and you would continue to surround yourself with them. If you were someone who really strived to expose yourself to different ideas and things outside your bubble, you can arguably do that easier than ever now.

This isn’t really to “exonerate” FB and Big G, but I think it’s worth asking what impact they’ve really had on this basic facet of life.

[Slansitartop]

>> Google and Facebook also use your data as input for increasingly sophisticated AI algorithms that put you in a filter bubble

> How is this any different from the pre- or sans-Google and Facebook world?

Easy: the bubbles are tighter and harder to pierce. In the old days, you'd have to get your information from the same news sources as everyone else, only customized at a fairly coarse level (e.g. a city). That regularly pierced your bubble and gave the community a common reference point. Now, many, many more people get all their information from individually-customized feeds that are precisely matched to their biases and their bubble. There's so many fewer common reference points which makes is harder for many people in the same communities to even communicate.

tl;dr: it's an emergent qualitative difference caused by scale.

[0xBABAD00C]

> Easy: the bubbles are tighter and harder to pierce

Says who? It's absolutely the opposite in my experience, having lived in various conservative societies most of my life. Bubbles are much more self-imposed and easily breakable and modifiable now, than even say 30 years ago, let alone 100.

[SirFatty]

So are you suggesting that it isn't much, much worse now?

[resu_nimda]

Much worse relative to what? An actual point in the past where people’s lives were less “bubble-y?” Or a hypothetical scenario where Facebook and Google took it upon themselves to upend the natural tendency of people to prefer identifying and associating with familiar, like-minded people and ideas?

[rhizome]

I think it’s worth asking what impact they’ve really had on this basic facet of life

Absolutely zero, and have arguably made it worse.

[resu_nimda]

Yes, I am asking what those arguments are. Keeping in mind that “worse” is a relative term, i.e. it needs to be demonstrated how it was better at some other time, which the article seems to assume a priori.

[rhizome]

All of the things you mention can happen more efficiently. There is no evidence that a wider availability of information reduces e.g. white supremacy, and in fact there is evidence[1] that it increases stridency. The increased availability of information is at least as likely to harden bubbles than it is to pop them, and while it's a necessary precursor to opening minds, it's not sufficient to do so on its own.

1. https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Backfire_effect