Comfort Zone
Although information is now at our fingertips, many people get their news and information from one site: Facebook.
Facebook is filtering everything to personalize it just for you. Unfortunately, the more you click on things you like, the more you continue to see those types of things and the less you see diverse views or diverse topics. According to the article, Facebook: If your Feed is an Echo Chamber, You Need More Friends, there is a growing debate on this. In Eli Pariser's Ted Talk on filter bubbles he says that it's not only who your friends with and what you're clicking on but the algorithms that major companies, like Facebook, have created to filter information.
I agree with Pariser that something must be done about these algorithms and that major companies like Facebook and Google should stop creating algorithms that personalize the information we receive. We need the internet to introduce us to new people, ideas, uncomfortable issues, and diverse view points. If the internet doesn't do this, then we have an unhealthy flow of information that we can't learn a great deal from.
One thing that Facebook has done according to this article, is that it has changed its trending topics so that when you click on something that's trending, you see more than one new source for that topic. I no longer have Facebook so I haven't check this feature but I'm curious if other people have seen changes in the information they receive on Facebook!
