A filter bubble or ideological echo chamber is a state of intellectual isolation that can result from personalized searches, recommendation systems, and algorithmic curation. Algorithms give us exactly what they think we want, and we only see information and opinions that agree with our owns- Dissenting opinions or information are filtered out. The term filter bubble was coined by internet activist Eli Pariser circa 2010.

The filter buble remains a dominant causal hypothesis of the increasing political polarization in recent decades. However, there growing empirical evidence against this suggestive explanation. Extreme filter bubbles seem to be rare. In fact, It seems the reason behind polarization might be the exact opposite. This is the theme of one recent video by Kurzgesagt: The Internet is Worse Than Ever – Now What?

Online you are constantly confronted with opinions and world views that are not your own. Your real-world interactions with your friends, family, colleagues and neighbors are much less diverse than your online bubble. The filter bubble exists in your real life, not online

Ok, but if that’s the case, shouldn’t the internet open our minds and make us more empathetic with each other? And here comes the sad truth. Human brains didn’t evolve to understand the true nature of reality, but to navigate and maintain social structures.

In a nutshell: Our brain is stupid.

In a nutshell: Our brains are not able to process the amount of disagreement we encounter on the social internet. The very mechanisms that made it possible for our ancestors to work together in the first place are derailed in ways we were not prepared for.

Whether you want it to or not, your brain sorts people by world views and opinions, into teams. This is not simply tribalism, it goes further. Researchers have called this process social sorting.

The script is inspired by a publication which connects the adjacent literatures on affective polarization, digital media, and opinion dynamics to suggest that the causal link between digital media and polarization runs not through divergence of opinions but rather via the dynamics of partisan sorting⁽¹⁾.

To explain the rise in sorting, the paper draws on opinion dynamics and digital media research to present a model which essentially turns the echo chamber on its head: it is not isolation from opposing views that drives polarization but precisely the fact that digital media bring us to interact outside our local bubble. When individuals interact locally, the outcome is a stable plural patchwork of cross-cutting conflicts. By encouraging nonlocal interaction, digital media drive an alignment of conflicts along partisan lines, thus effacing the counterbalancing effects of local heterogeneity.

Kurgestaz proposed solution reminds me of a well known Spanish saying: juntos pero no revueltos. It is worth a thought, though to me, the admission of defeat.

We are all in this together – but until our brains adjust to being able to deal with that, we might be better off being a tiny bit separated.

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(1) Törnberg, Petter. ‘How Digital Media Drive Affective Polarization through Partisan Sorting’. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 119, no. 42 (18 October 2022): e2207159119. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2207159119.

Featured Image: Juntos pero no revueltos