2debate

What the heck is going on…?

Why is the flat earth hypothesis en vogue again? How come that there are people that really believe that Hillary Clinton ran a child molester operation through a pizza joint? It turns out that social proof in this age seem to be more powerful than any other force. Or is it? And wasn’t that always the case with news editing, social movements etc.?

The term has been famously coined by Internet activist Eli Pariser. He describes it as a state of intellectual isolation that can result from personalized searches when a website algorithm selectively guesses what information a user would like to see based on information about the user, such as location, past click-behavior and search history.

And while we live in a time where information was never further than one click away, we also seem to loose the ability to identify trustworthy sources and many seem to lack the appetite to seek contrarian views. In a way this is the core idea behind 2debate… we run this podcast BECAUSE we want to confront our biases and beliefs. If you follow our project, then you’re very much in the same boat

In any case – thanks for following, listening, voting, commenting! Want to know more? There are some more amazing resources for you to dig in:

• [Text] Forbes – Why 2017 was the year of the filter bubble.
• [Text] Quartz – Google is finally admitting it has a filter bubble problem
• [Text] Google blog entry referenced in above article
• [Text] MIT Tech Review – Technologists are trying to fix the “filter bubble” problem that tech helped create
• [Text] The Guardian – Eli Pariser: activist whose filter bubble warnings presaged Trump and Brexit
• [Video] Eli Pariser’s TED Talk
• [Text] Vice – Social media “filter bubbles” aren’t actually a thing research suggests
• [Text] Business Insider – Mark Zuckerberg denies that Facebook is trapping its users in ‘filter bubbles’
• [Text] The Conversation – Fake news, echo chambers and filter bubbles: Underresearched and overhyped
• [Podcast] WNYC Studios – Note to self: How to shake up your echo chamber

Related we also recommend to revisit our debate about fake news

And now… … enjoy our latest episode! And don’t forget to vote or share your thoughts, this is what keeps us going!

Sebastian & Dirk

Picture: CC0, Pixabay