>The internet doesn't magically make social, political, religious, and ideological rifts magically disappear, it just seemed like it did because nobody could associate users with their backgrounds.
But one could argue that our modern "Social Media Internet" gives exactly that impression. Whether it's Google, Facebook, Twitter or whatnot: People are being funneled into "ideological bubbles" based on their preferences and being surrounded just by people who share their views.
Thus many people assume they are on the "right side" because everybody in their Internet-social circles thinks exactly like them. That's why many people act so surprised/outraged if they happen to come across somebody from another "social media echo chamber" with completely opposing views.
"People are being funneled into "ideological bubbles""
I'm not as convinced they are being funneled. I remember back in high school, my friends and I would sit around in a circle, in meat space.
"War is wrong"
And we would go around the circle: "yup", "absolutely", etc
"Some other liberal talking point"
yup, of course, so true....
I feel they are self selecting. Look at the election, when liberals were 3x more likely to unfriend people. [1] And I think they have been self selecting since before the internet. Also there is a geographic component. Rural areas vote red, urban vote blue. We have had geographic filter bubbles for decades.
Keep in mind that in the meat space people consciously chose to socialize with alike people, that's why you called them "friends" and why only "liberal talking points" were discussed.
On social media, this happens on a less conscious level because with every choice you make some algorithm slowly "personalizes" everything you get to see a little bit more, thus it increases surfacing things/people that you are more likely to agree with while pretty much "hiding" anything/anybody that you wouldn't like/agree with. This is a slow process and it's mostly hidden from the user, as such most people are not even aware of being funneled in different "circles" in such a way, so they think their personalized social media reality represents the reality of everybody as a whole.
The big difference to geographic filter bubbles being that those still leave you aware of there being an "other side to the story", case in point: You know there are red states and there are blue states. On social media that other side gets blended out in such a way that it might just as well not exist at all because it won't be surfaced to you unless you make a conscious effort looking for it.
"Keep in mind that in the meat space people consciously chose to socialize with alike people"
"some algorithm slowly "personalizes" everything you get to see a little bit more"
You're right, I wish I would have wrote: they are not exclusively being funneled. That being said, they are still friending alike people, and not liking stuff which is diverse. I realize I am sort of victim blaming here :(
Basically I have seen a lot of: "the internet causes x", where x existed before. I just wanted to make the point that this is an evolution of a previous phenomenon.
Not blaming the Internet here, rather social media.
Pre-social media this didn't really exist in such a crass way. 20 years ago it was kind of a novel thing to "meet" another human online. Most people didn't really care about the other person's political beliefs or whatnot, it was already enough to have found somebody else who was also on this weird Internet thing and shared the enthusiasm for it.
I remember thinking back then: This is the thing! This is what's gonna unite humanity across all kinds of borders as people can't be discriminated against based on superficial attributes like age, skin color or political beliefs. After all, back then we didn't have "social media profiles" and most people still cared about their privacy so barely anybody blast out their personal details for the whole world to see, sadly that didn't become a reality.
Instead, it feels like we are in the exact opposite place, what a sad turn of events.
Don't let the electoral map fool you, there are very few places that skew overwhelmingly to one side. Many places may have a majority favoring one major political party, but the minority isn't that small. I live in the northeast, which is reliable electoral votes for democrats but there's not shortage of republicans around.
The only thing that has changed is the ability to demand opinion segragation and discussion protection, without beeing called out as undemocratic hyper-critter.
I remember reading "The Filter Bubble" about 6 years ago or so and thinking it was the dumbest thing since purple ketchup. Fast forward to the past 24 months and the concept has become more real than the internet itself...
Well, for a lot of the world, Facebook is synonymous with the internet as an idea. In India, FB has negotiated with a lot of mobile carriers to exempt themselves from being counted towards data usage. This means that some double digit percentage of the world thinks that FB is the internet. How can you expect people to not be in a filter bubble when their idea of the net is FB and FB only?
But one could argue that our modern "Social Media Internet" gives exactly that impression. Whether it's Google, Facebook, Twitter or whatnot: People are being funneled into "ideological bubbles" based on their preferences and being surrounded just by people who share their views.
Thus many people assume they are on the "right side" because everybody in their Internet-social circles thinks exactly like them. That's why many people act so surprised/outraged if they happen to come across somebody from another "social media echo chamber" with completely opposing views.