Marketing
Today, I wanted to discuss with you why you should look at popping your filter bubble. First of all, does everybody understand what I mean when I say filter bubble? Hands up if youâve heard that term before. Only ⊠Oh, okay. All right. Good thing Iâm here then.
So, filter bubbleâs this concept thatâs come across in the last few years. It was coined by this guy called Eli Pariser I think is the way you pronounce his name, but I might be mangling that. He broadly describes it as: âthe personal ecosystem of information thatâs been catered by [âŠ] algorithmsâ. Thatâs him. He also, after doing this work around filter bubbles, went onto co-found Upworthy.
Broadly speaking, a filter bubble is a feedback loop that you get when you use a personalisation system, such as the one in Google Personalised Search, or such as the one in Facebookâs News Feed. It works on this simple principal: if you like this, then youâll like that. Iâm sure youâve all seen on Facebook youâll like something and then you get recommended a load of other similar stuff. Itâs basically that.
The idea being that as you increasingly personalise your experience online, your view, what you see in Facebook or whatever the platform is becomes increasing narrow to the detriment of everything else thatâs going on in the world. This is whatâs become known as the filter bubble. Many people, myself included, think thatâs quite problematic. Iâm going to talk to you a little bit today about what it is and how you can maybe look to escape from it, if you wish to.
This is actually kind of, although itâs mainly talked about in terms of Facebook â because obviously Facebook is the most personalised thing on the Internet that youâre going to see every day â itâs also, as I touched on it, itâs Google Personalised Search, all of the paid activity pretty much that we do here is based on this kind of rule. We target people based on their existing interests, on the basis that theyâll probably like similar stuff. Thatâs exactly as we should do because weâre spending clientsâ money, we have to spend that as sensibly as we can. People who have an interest in cars are more likely to buy cars than people who donât have an interest in cars. Makes sense.
My team do it as well when we build content strategies. We look at what people have interacted with and whatâs been successful before. We learn from that and try to create similar stuff. Itâs all around this rule: if you like this, then youâll like that.
Just wanted to give you a little example of my own kind of little filter bubble that I live in. As of yesterday, for the general election, the pollingâs looking something like this. Conservatives in the lead. Labour not far behind. All the other guys quite a way behind. If you did this same poll of my Facebook friends, it ends up looking like that. My little filter bubble that Iâm living in on Facebook, if I were to view the world only through my Facebook feed, I would think we were living in this glorious Liberal paradise, where everybody cares about the environment, everybody believes in equal rights â but we donât live there.
Because of the people Iâm friends with on Facebook, Iâm missing out on all of the conversations that are being had by people who arenât interested in the same stuff as that group. I donât see conversations between Conservative voters or conversations between UKIP voters. It may as well not exist to me.
This is the reason why when things like the Brexit vote and Trumpâs election happened, everybody that didnât want those things to happen were quite surprised because they just didnât have visibility of the discussions going on on the other side of the fence. Thatâs kind of the essence of the filter bubble problem if you like.
Obviously, Facebookâs algorithms have been getting better and better over the years, which means that this problem, of only being able to view a very small slice of the world is getting worse and worse. Itâs only going to continue getting worse, especially for me because I obviously have a couple of friends that I need to get rid of.
The problem with this is bubbles are quiteâŠtheyâre comfortable. Theyâre nice places to be. Itâs everybody patting each other on the back and everybody agreeing with one another and talking about how everybody has to vote for Caroline Lucas. It has to be a conscious decision to move outside of that. These things are always formed by habit. These platforms that personalise your experience, be it Facebook, be it Instagram, be it Twitter, wherever, they all make money by making it incredibly easy for you to fall into a habit of just consuming the same thing over and over again. If you decide that you want to go outside this little bubble youâve created for yourself, you have to break that habit. You actually have to make a conscious decision to go out and consume stuff thatâs not within your usual everyday remit.
I think thereâs a problem of staying within your bubble as you end up with an unrealistic view of the world and unrealistic expectations. According to my Facebook, the Green Party are going to win the election, but when they donât, Iâm obviously going to be very disappointed. Thereâs two reasons why I think you should try to venture outside your filter bubble.
Firstly, and this is quite a big one, I think it genuinely makes you better people. If you think about ways that you might look to do this in real life, that would be things like going on holiday, experiencing new cultures, trying new food, meeting new people. Thatâs us going outside our little Britain bubble. Itâs fantastic. You always have a really good time. No reason not to do the same thing online.
Second reason, it will probably actually make you better at your job as well. Thereâs reasons why processes that we use have names like empathy mapping and user journeys. Itâs because we can do our jobs better when we can empathise with people that we donât have everyday contact with. The more we can be a bit more worldly, and get to know those people a bit better, the better we can be at marketing to them.
Filter bubbles usually relate to politics. Of course, they do very much at the moment because weâre living in this very politically-charged environment, but actually they can exist around all sorts of things. Just to pick a couple out. You can have bubbles around gender. Iâm sure a lot of people have worked in companies where itâs predominantly men. You end up with this kind of male bubble of culture. Obviously, nationality, race, sexual orientation, industry. Massive one in marketing. We live in a marketing bubble. Thatâs why we have to do things like onboarding with clients to get to know their industries because we have no visibility of it.
Location is a really important one as well. If you want to go into another bubble, I can highly recommend Scottish Twitter because it is amazing. Definitely look at Scottish Twitter. People have kind of come to realise this is a problem over the last few years.
The Guardian, to their credit, have recognised this is a problem. They now have this section called âBurst Your Bubble,â which is obviously for Guardian readers who want to explore a little bit of what the other side of, people on the other side of the fence are saying. They do roundups of the conservative coverage of popular world events. It gives you a bit of an idea of what people on the other side of the table are thinking.
I would also definitely recommend you read the book by Eli Pariser where he originally coined this term. There is also a TED talk that goes with it, if you are too lazy to read a book. Fundamentally, as I said, itâs about changing habits. If you get all of your news from one particular website, go out and find some different websites to get your news from. They donât have to be so far removed from your ideology that theyâre offensive. They just have to be a little bit different. Itâll help you accrue lots of other takes on things and then form better opinions yourself.
I actually, while preparing for this, had a look at who I follow on Twitter and the makeup of those people. You probably wonât be surprised to find out itâs predominantly straight, white men who work in digital marketing. Obviously, thatâs a little bubble that Iâve created for myself that I now want to go and fix, by bringing a wider range of people into my bubble so that they can expand my horizons.
Going outside our comfort zone makes us better people and itâll also make us better at our jobs. Thank you.