There's an Echo in Here......

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Has the Internet placed you in a filter bubble? Do their algorithms limit your feeds to the people and organizations who only think the same way as you? Today, our marketplace of free ideas seems constrained by the instruments that social media providers are using to show us what they think we will be interested in seeing. Additionally, it is human nature to want to interact with people who have shared thoughts and ideals. See Echo Chambers are Dangerous. We tend to hang out with people like ourselves in person, so why not hang out online with people who are like ourselves as well.

When we are not exposed to people who think differently than us, we live in what has been termed as an "epistemic bubble." Bubbles are safe and enclosed, but they can be suffocating as well. Unfortunately, for many of us, these bubbles have turned into echo chambers. The term is a bit deceiving, however. In a social media echo chamber, we not only solely hear from people who share our views, but we begin to distrust and marginalize all of those people who live on the outside of our chambers. See The Problem of Living Inside Echo Chambers. Echo chambers have been compared to cults. Do we really want to live in a cult? I think not. We need to make sure that we not only hear outside voices, but we also need to be open to trusting outside voices. To believe that our views are 100% infallible is narcissistic at best.

Do we want to only listen to ourselves speak? Is an echo, echo, echo of our own thoughts worth listening to? Perhaps, it's time to burst the bubble.

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