Filter bubbles can be a feature

When I was studying for the MA in DAM at King's College London, I noticed the term 'filter bubble' a few times. Either it would be in a paper I'd find or it'd be mentioned by a lecturer. Back then, 2016 - 2018, it was always framed as a bug, but things have changed.

I'm using the terms 'feature' and 'bug' a little loosely here. I'm referring to the famous question: is it a bug or a feature? To us, as our phone's battery starts to noticeably degrade in it's capability to hold a charge, we'll think of it as a bug. Something we have which was working perfectly no longer is. However, to the phone manufacturers and hardware designers, this is a feature because it means everyone is induced to buy a new product every two years. Holding out for three years can be uncomfortable and four painful.

So, when I was studying, the filter bubble effect, where we were seeing a limited amount of things in our feeds because of who we were following and what we engaged with, was regarded as a bug. We had something that could work better for us, but we were limiting what we were seeing.

But four to six years later, does that really still apply? The number of platforms has increased, the capability of platforms to reach us has increased, tech companies are manipulating their search more, and every topic gets run through culture war middleware that degrades much of the information coming in to us anyway.

I see the challenge today as one of filtering out what doesn't matter to us. That does require us to understand what's important to each of us, bur there's real value in doing so because it also enhances our capability to understand what to pursue.

For example, I recently looked at who I was following on Twitter and unfollowed two thirds of them. I was seeing too little of what I valued, so I applied a filter bubble. As a result, I'm seeing much more of what I value, increasing Twitter's value to me. The only other alternative I could think of was deleting my account. I suspect I need to unfollow more accounts still, but I've hit the 80/20 point. I’ve done the same thing on LinkedIn too.

Flowers in Regent's Park by Craig Stevens, Fuji XF10 F10 ISO 400

Which of these is the better photo? It's the same photo. I've just done a quick crop on the second photo to focus on what's most important.

I see the challenge today as not one of searching for more information, but of filtering out all the information we don't need in our lives. So today, I view filter bubbles as potential features.

That said, nothing is 100% upside. One of my stock phrases is optimise for one thing, deoptimise for something else. So in optimising for more concentrated information, what am I deoptimising for? A spectrum of information that could enable me to be more informed on an array of topics. However, I view that as a price worth paying because the information in some of these areas, politics for example, has become so degraded that I'd question its value.

More than anything, I want to crop out what isn't valuable or only makes my life worse.