Echochamber

What is an Echochamber? As the dictionary states, an echochamber is “an environment in which a person encounters only beliefs or opinions that coincide with their own, so that their existing views are reinforced and alternative ideas are not considered.”

Humans engage in content in many ways throughout their daily lives. People are expected to take in all they hear and read about and they are expected to take in the information and form opinions and develop a knowledge base and then interact with others using this knowledge. Understanding right from wrong in both actions and information is a key part of human interaction. But conflict is something most people like to avoid. Therefore, associating with people with similar likes and dislikes, similar behaviors, and similar interests is something people do. But when this association does not allow a person to be open-minded it can create problems.

According to an article in Forbes.com, there are 6 reasons why people tend to create a comfortable “echo chamber”.

1. Herd Instinct - People have a natural and evolutionary instinct to cooperate and be a part of a larger whole, and they tend to seek out others with similar viewpoints.
2. Polarization - the propensity to force the adoption of views in an attempt to maintain some semblance of individual power
3. Selective Exposure and Confirmation Bias - People tend to favor information that reinforces their preexisting views and avoid information that challenges them.
4. Personalization of Conflict - When it comes to personalized content, you aren’t necessarily being given the “right” answer; you’re being given the answer you’re most likely to engage with.
5. Socialization of Content - Your online connections can influence your personal reach, the ability you have to impact others and your search results.
6. Content Sharing - Much of the content we are exposed to is shared without ever going through the proxy of a rational (or even irrational) human mind.

(https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/11/21/escaping-the-echo-chamber-the-danger-of-content-and-our-new-call-to-responsibility/#5c7052fa8d54)

While an echochamber can offer a person a level of comfort because they are speaking and communicating with people who will agree with them and are likely to be non-confrontational, it can also be dangerous. Relying on information from people that think exactly as you do can prevent a person from actually being aware of the different sides of an issue and prevent them from getting a full understanding of the how’s and why’s that might lead to a conflict, a war, etc. Understand all sides of an issue allows a person to make valid, informed decisions. Scholars and journalists have argued that “the rise of social media and its creation of “echo chambers”—curated feeds comprising posts that match our political beliefs—for increasing the polarization among people throughout the world.”

(https://news.northeastern.edu/2018/10/02/social-media-echo-chambers-arent-making-the-us-more-politically-polarized-so-what-is/)

Each morning, American citizens wake up to a new tweet, statement of comment from the President of the United States. And each morning American citizens select a news medium to listen to in order to get more information about that comment from the President. If a person selects MSNBC as their news source, they will hear information one way. And if they select Fox News, they will hear the same news with a different slant. Is one reporting real news and the other reporting “fake news”? When given an opportunity to select their media choices, people tend to choose the TV channel or print outlet that shares similar beliefs to them. But shouldn’t mainstream news outlets share information without any form of bias? Perhaps, but unfortunately, this is just not happening. People select news outlets so that they hear the news the way they want to hear it. And, people often spread or share news through social media that fit within their “echochamber”. But some believe that people are smart and can discern the difference between opinion and fact. “Let’s say I’m a liberal person who reads The New York Times,” Jo said, referring to a newspaper that leans toward the left. “I know that they’re generally more liberal, so I can watch for that bias when I’m reading about a new topic. If I were a liberal person learning about a new topic from Fox News [which typically falls more to the right], it’s hard to understand their exact bias and weed out the facts from the politics.”  (https://news.northeastern.edu/2018/10/02/social-media-echo-chambers-arent-making-the-us-more-politically-polarized-so-what-is/) Individuals should not have to take the news that is delivered to them and weed out the bias in it. News should be delivered with content that is factual and not opinionated. People need to be more responsible when engaging with news stories. Small changes in an individual’s behavior, like reading an article to the end and having a full understanding of what was being reported and being more objective when listening or reading what is being reported can help spread more factual information.

Over the past year, there has been a focus on the technology behind Facebook and the news feeds that appear on people’s Facebook pages. The algorithm of the site actually monitors and evaluates activities on that site, their posts and the “friends” that they associate with. Doing so has allowed Facebook to control the information that comes up on a person’s Facebook page. This means that Facebook is creating a type of  “echochamber” to each individual. This can be dangerous, especially if Facebook has become the main news source for an individual.

Privacy

As technology has made life much more convenient, it has also made our personal lives much more public and unsafe. Any information a person enters online becomes a “digital tattoo” as described in the Juan Enriquez TED talk. Today, people have a variety of social media accounts, they shop online, and they use the internet for a variety of other reasons. And each and every move a person makes is being tracked and stored. No one’s privacy is safe. It is now possible for companies and the government to collect and store information about all of us, but why does this information we enter have to come at the expense of a person giving up their privacy?

Data is no longer safe or controllable. We have lost control of our personal data and our privacy. Ideas that gave way to search engines like Google, social media sites like Facebook, email accounts, etc are amazing and have changed the world we live in for better and for worse. It starts when a person does a basic search. The topic follows them wherever they go. And, once a person enters information on any site on the internet, the information is stored and analyzed and compared with other data to get more detailed information about a person.They are tracked further and content is then pushed to them. It starts when a person sends an email to someone. It is not like a letter as Any Yen stated in his TED talk. It is more like a postcard where anyone can read it. Once you hit send on your email, it goes through many hands/eyes before including internet providers, email providers, even the government, before it ever gets to the intended recipient.

The more technology is developed and improved, the more our ability to hide and have personal information remain personal becomes more challenging. Take for example, something we all enjoy doing on a daily basis, using the camera on our cell phone. When you take a photo, the photo is tagged with the location of where the photo was taken. It is also installing facial recognition and can potentially associate a photo with a person’s name. Now assuming you took a photo of a stranger in a park, you are now able to take that photo, find out their name and then Google them to find out more information about them and just like that, you know more about this stranger and you have never even met them. Clearly, a loss of a person’s privacy.

People are buying more online than offline these days. And in this new world of shopping, the data we provide at each website is no longer safe. Retailers store the data consumers input and that information is then “unprotected” and can be a part of a data breach. Or what about a person’s medical records. A patient file is now fully digital and many of the hospitals and medical groups provide access to this information in online websites - also at a risk for hacking and a data breach. Part of the process before seeing a doctor, is signing off to give a doctor permission to maintain your records in a digital format.

And to think that I can not even get into my car and go somewhere without being tracked represents an invasion of my privacy. In Catherine Krumps TED talk she elaborates. Advanced military weapons and equipment are making their way to local police departments. Video surveillance is now common. Location information and location trackers can reveal all the places that you visit. Government gains a detail portrait about how private citizens interact. Automatic license plate readers are everywhere -- mounted on poles, on police cars, etc  -- and they can quickly get a description of the owner of the car, their habits and whether or not person in the car to see if they are on any government hot lists. But local police are keeping track of every plate that passes these readers, and now no one’s privacy is safe. Her example of Mike showed that the police captured he was going, who he was with, where he shopped and even tracked him getting out of his own car in his own driveway. And you can be certain that Mike is not the only one being tracked. Photos of all people going about their daily lives are being captured. Personal identities are no longer safe.

And, as the cost of storing data has gone down, the ability to store tons and tons of data is that much easier. Therefore, the increase in these types of privacy-invading technologies are on the rise. A person must be smart in order to do the best they can to protect their privacy.  Each person must consider every post they make, every photo they upload, every dialog in every chat room, every tweet they make and every email they send because once a person hits “enter”, everything they post is public. Privacy as we know it today will never exist again. No one is immune!