Once upon a time, a social media company (whose name might start with “F”) got the idea that if you put information in front of people that was similar to what they had looked at in the past, their engagement in your app would increase. That would allow them to sell more advertising, which would make them rich. What could possibly be the downside of that scenario?
The problem is that this curation of information hinders critical thinking. If you see only information related to what you’ve looked at in the past, you might never see the other side of the coin. This can lead to what’s known as an echo chamber, where a group of folks with similar beliefs interact only within that group, thereby increasing their feelings of righteousness.
Ever notice that even if you have a few hundred friends on Facebook, you see posts from only that same handful of folks?
While we can’t solely attribute this phenomenon to Facebook, it definitely popularized the concept. And because it got rich, everyone else who wanted to get rich copied them. Now the curation of information extends far beyond social media.
Anyone who uses a news aggregator should notice this. The news services from Apple, Yahoo, Microsoft, Google and most everyone else is guilty of this. Show an interest in a particular sport or sports team, hobby — or the elephant in the room, a political position — and boom! The next thing you know, your feed is full of articles on similar topics or with a similar perspective.
What can folks do to avoid falling into this trap? The first step is awareness, because many people don’t even realize that this is happening. So think about that the next time you are presented with the 15th article evaluating the NFL draft.
From A technical perspective, there are alternatives. If you use a traditional browser for your web-based activities, consider Brave (brave.com) as an alternative to Edge, Chrome, Firefox or Safari. Brave touts its policy of not storing your data, tracking your activities or selling your details, as a way to protect your privacy. The downside of Brave is that its current market share is minuscule. Something to note, however, is that Brave is popular with IT professionals.
The duckduckgo (duckduckgo.com) search engine also purports to not track your data. While duckduckgo has been around for some time, it has never quite taken off. Still, it is an effective tool.
As technical folks often say, however, the real solution isn’t technical. Instead, people need to take the time to ask themselves questions, especially when encountering political, conspiratorial or scientific information. Who is behind the information, what is the evidence and, most important, what do other sources say? It’s really not that challenging, even in the curated world, to find other sources from the flip side.
John Agsalud is an IT expert with more than 25 years of information technology experience in Hawaii and around the world. He can be reached at jagsalud@live.com.
