Echo Mechanism on Facebook Is Not As Scary As We Think
It has been so long since social theorists and political scientists fretted about how the internet can polarize and even flatten democratic discourse. With the help of advanced technology, Google, Facebook and others now give suggestion regarding content based according on what the people enjoyed before. Due to this, some scholars think that people are now creating what we call “online chamber” of their views.
However, Facebook’s data scientists made a statement that echo chamber is not something as scary as what other people might think. They said that echo chamber is not a threat when used on the social network. According to them, it has its own limitations.
There was a study conducted on 10.1 million American Facebook users. After six months of analyzing how the participants navigated the site, it has been found out that the network of people and the stories that usually appear on their timeline are actually stories that are in line with their own ideological preferences. Compared to the expected worst scenario, the effect is much more limited.
Also, the researchers also told said that the choices of Facebook users on which stories they should click is much more important and has more effect than the filtering mechanism of Facebook when it comes to determining if users saw news that are not in line or in conflict with their ideology.