All people have biases.  We all see the world differently, through a screen built on our upbringing, our values, our education, out history, and maybe even our genetics.  The internet, through its filter bubbles, is feeding this bias.  Filter bubbles are invisible visors put in place by sites like Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Amazon, and others.  Basically, these sites analyze the types of things we clicked on in the past and then put things on our search results or feed that we are more likely to click on.  If you click often on things relating to Star Trek or Legos or world peace, these sites will show you more things related to those topics even if you searched for something else.  The problem, according to Eli Pariser, is that filter bubbles show us what the internet thinks we want to see, not what we need to see.

These filter bubbles exist in real life too.  We are daily filtered from other opinions based upon what news media we watch (FOX vs MSNBC), what coffee shop we go to (Starbucks vs Dunkin Donuts vs the gas station), who we talk to, how we work out, where we work and live, what we read, and more.  These bubbles in real life, like the bubbles on the internet, insulate and give us a deep sense of confirmation bias.  They confirm what we already know and believe.

Social Networking is a key tool that accentuates and amplifies our filter bubbles.  We tend to like (or ‘friend’) those that are similar to us.  Social networks are not a new things.  As Christakis and Fowler point out in their book Connected, Facebook itself was simply based on a telephone directory (called the Face book) that included pictures of people who attended Harvard (it dated back at least until 1979).  This book in itself created a social network where Harvard students could call each other, develop relationships, share information, and confirm each other’s biases.  All a social network requires is some form of structure (rules), a mechanism for joining, and a reason for people to get together (Shirky’s Bargain, Tool, and Promise).  The internet simply allows these networks to form at less cost and on a much larger scale.

But herein lies the dilemma.  If my life offline leads to its own bias, and my life online greatly feeds this bias, both through use of the internet and through social networking, leading to my own personal filter bubble just getting larger, how do I break out and change my perceptions?  How do I learn to look at the other side of an issue without looking down on the other side of the issue?  How do I convince my brother to move past simply listening to Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity and reading Foxnews.com in order to find some common ground?  I distinctly remember working to combat the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill in the summer of 2010.  Louisiana was hot and a lot of very good people were working very hard to try and mitigate the disaster.  Yet, every day the media and many NGOs swept past this story and instead created a byline that we were not even trying to make things better.  There was a self-reinforcing bias to what they believed–their filter bubble.  How do you change this bias and help people see both sides?

First, we need to acknowledge that we don’t know everything, that there are other opposing views in life, and that people are not evil or wrong simply because they believe something else.  And second, we need to actively force ourselves to seek out information that doesn’t conform to our biases.  The internet can help.  The internet makes more information available than we have ever been able to access in the history of mankind.  We simply need to reach out and not get stuck in our own filters.  We need to remember to not simply focus on only getting our news from the Huffington Post, but instead try to also take a look at the Drudge Report.  We should try to learn about both sides of an issue and only then start thinking about pushing out a judgment.