[davidmurdoch]

The way people carefully curate their own little filter bubbles on purpose is insane to me.

As an adult, why would you never want to be exposed to viewpoints that differ from your own? That's not healthy.

Edit: I'm mostly referring to those that also regularly publish their opinions assuming for others to read them.

[dorkwood]

I suppose it depends on what your end goal is. For example, I've disabled news notifications on my phone. I used to get pinged multiple times per day to be told that either someone had died in an accident, or was raped and murdered, or some other such thing. One might argue that I'm sticking my head in the sand and 'living in a bubble' by turning these off. But while I think it's beneficial to expose myself to ideas and events outside of my comfort zone, I'd argue that it's better for my health and well-being if I exercise some control over what goes into my eyeballs each day.

[Markoff]

I've never understood people keeping enabled notifications which are not directly for them (like for email/IM/SMS messages and own calendar reminders).

Must be people with a lot of spare time with nothing to do or someone who doesn't know how to disable notifications (I was just yesterday configuring mother's phone disabling notifications after she asked me to disable her lock screen completely since she doesn't use any PIN anyway, she stand no chance with this option buried in hidden Developer options). It's odd to see someone who is neither of these groups keeping them enabled, honestly Notifications should be permission each app should explicitly ask with reason why it needs them during launch and they should be disabled by default.

[dorkwood]

> It's odd to see someone who is neither of these groups keeping them enabled

I honestly only got a couple of those notifications before disabling them.

I was more trying to find an example of how curating a filter bubble can be healthy, but one that wasn't anything to do with Twitter since it's too politically charged for people to think clearly about.

[davidmurdoch]

I'm only referring to those who build these complete echo chambers on social media. For relatively mentally stable adults it's good to know about and consider dissenting opinions, especially so if you publish your own opinions, like the author. I completely agree that a bit of head-in-the-sand can be quite good for mental health and happiness.

[zimpenfish]

> it's good to know about and consider dissenting opinions

There's dissenting opinions like "I like team A" vs "I like team B" and then there's dissenting opinions like "I think LGBTQ+ people should have rights" vs "I think LGBTQ+ people should be rounded up / banned from public / have no rights".

[davidmurdoch]

Not exactly fair in the extremism on both sides.

If you don't know about or consider alternate viewpoints could you really have productive discourse with a person that aligns with those viewpoints?

Most people that you'd meet or talk to that may disagree on LGBTQ aren't extremist, they are more along the lines of "a children's cartoon about dinosaurs shouldn't have multiple lesbian make out scenes" or "Disney is indoctrinating children", or "just because I wouldn't date someone of the opposite sex doesn't make me homophobic".

[zimpenfish]

> could you really have productive discourse with a person that aligns with those viewpoints?

There is no discourse you can have with a person who believes that LGBTQ+ people have fewer rights than others.

> "a children's cartoon about dinosaurs shouldn't have multiple lesbian make out scenes"

Now that I would like to see. Which one was it?

> "Disney is indoctrinating children"

There's no discourse you can have with someone claiming such a bizarre viewpoint. It's like flat earthers.

[davidmurdoch]

> Which one was it?

Towards the end of the last season of Camp Crustaceous. To be fair, there are intense (for a cartoon aimed at kids) romantic scenes between a straight couple as well.

> There's no discourse you can have with someone claiming such a bizarre viewpoint.

Eh, not that bizarre. It's not hard to image people could make the leap from "Disney has a gay agenda" (some Disney producer did an interview stating that leadership welcomes her gay agenda and that she tries to put queerness wherever she can) to "Disney wants to indoctrinate children".

The extremist are loud and annoying, but they aren't the majority.

[davidmurdoch]

I'm curious which parts of the above is deserving of downvotes?

[Kye]

Your faulty assumption is that social media is someone's only input. Why can't I have a nice little oasis to chill at between battles for my right to live?

[davidmurdoch]

Social media is probably the broadest input most people can get.

[Kye]

Shallow exposure to other experiences never told me much. People hold back out of fear of harassment in a place as public and algorithmically tuned toward creating negative experiences as Twitter. Mastodon and the fediverse improve on that slightly by not having the algorithm, but there's still harassment.

I certainly don't reveal my whole self on social media. I open up a bit more in places with good moderation like this, or places where I control the comments like my blog.

[chris_wot]

Because there are many abusive people. If you could exclude only trolls and abusers easily on Twitter then I’d think you’d have less curation going on. But there isn’t so to protect themselves, people curate.

It’s either that or leave that platform. I did this with Facebook and never got involved with Twitter. My life is great. I get plenty of opinions I don’t agree with on HN, and it’s great.

[davidmurdoch]

The unhealthy part is people who curate an echo chamber and then live in it.

Of course, the even healthier thing is probably being more like you and just not getting involved with Twitter at all.

[chris_wot]

Don’t disagree.

[davidgerard]

achieving a "filter bubble" would be a remarkable achievement.

in practice, you can absolutely get your daily ration of poop on social media just by showing up.

[xiphias2]

Because quite often people with an agenda are trending, usually very selective about what they say about people.

The start of this article is a great example: Elon was always voting democrat, but the left (progressive) side has changed/progressed enought that Elon's viewpoints are considered right right now (it has been the same for me as I got older).

It still doesn't make him an extreme right person, even if people can (and do) find the few moments in his life that can be considered extremist (which everybody has, just most people hide it).

At some point looking at those other viewpoints and finding whether there's a hidden agenda just gets tiring and boring.