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This year a prophecy was fullfilled. In 2011, Eli Pariser, author, activist, entrepreneur, published a New York Times bestselling book, The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding from You. He introduced this new concept of filter bubble created by internet media services algorithms. He predicted that this phenomenon would harm society, democracy, and ultimately humanity as a whole. This has already happened. In March, the whistleblower Christopher Wylie released documents from his former employer Cambridge Analytica that disclosed a covert operation to use personal data from millions of Facebook users to influence US elections, and possibly voting processes worldwide, like the Brexit referendum.

Pariser has addressed the dangers of information clustering and isolation, but these concepts are hardly new. Scoble and Israel have coined the concept of “echo chambers” [1] back in 2006, examining the internet blogging activity, but since then the advent of social media has drastically amplified this phenomenon. Simply put, in an “echo chamber”, one receives confirmation-byased, and inexact information. Personal views that are not enforced by evidence or are group-singling or prejudicial can thrive unchecked by public free discourse and idea exchange. Propelled as “free speech”, this practice has nothing to do with liberty. In a society where free and unabridged discourse is frequent, people are exposed to multiple ways of thinking. Socially unnaceptable pratices are not tolerated.

That is a danger that will predictably become much more important in the future. One thing is interfering with institutions and democracy, another more profound is to incubate social upheaval. The formation of groups of people united by internet, without geographical constraints, and with auto-reinforced byased ideas can lead to political instability, widespread public discontentment, and ultimately to social disruption and chaos. This is not just a semantic statement, but a logical conclusion based in economical theory. Realistic conflict theory, a model for intergroup conflict created in its modern form by Donald Campbell, states that hostility can arise as a result of conflicting goals and competition over limited resources in a real or perceived zero-sum system. [2]

Cultural tribalism can generate such a perceived and persistent system of zero-sum game over a pre-existent epistemic bubble [3], a structure that can be described as a social graph with significant isolation of groups from the mainstream information exchange, disregarding the causes of that isolation. Epistemic bubbles are frequently passive temporary processes, but echo chambers and cultural tribes are persistent, self-reinforced, positive feedback loops that creat social groups with conflicting interests against the societal status quo. It is a disequilibrium state that leans toward generalized chaos.

The Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data scandal is only the herald of a potentially problematic era of social relationship in the wake of generalized algorithmic bias. We can expect that this trend will strengthens, and pervades many levels of society organization. This will corrodes our current social organization, institutions, and seeds widespread disequilibrium. Actually, we should really be afraid of this. One could foresee insurgent masses invading public spaces that have never been subject to conflict in this modern period. I sincerely hope that this grim forecast of mine turns out to be completely wrong, but I would advise that actions be taken in the present to avoid this potential outcome.

References:

1. Scoble, Robert and Shel Israel. 2006. Naked Conversations, Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.
2. Sherif, M.; Harvey, O.J.; White, B.J.; Hood, W. & Sherif, C.W. (1961). Intergroup Conflict and Cooperation: The Robbers Cave Experiment. Norman, OK: The University Book Exchange.
3. Magnani, Lorenzo; Bertolotti, Tommaso (2011). “Cognitive Bubbles and Firewalls: Epistemic Immunizations in Human Reasoning”. Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society. 33 (33).