Facebook puts it this way: “By enabling people from diverse backgrounds to easily connect and share their ideas, we can decrease world conflict in the short and long term.” But we know this is an illusion. Facebook leads us to a destination that is the precise opposite of its proclaimed ideal. It creates a condition that Eli Pariser has called the “Filter Bubble.” Facebook’s algorithms supply us with the material that we like to read and will feel moved to share. It’s not hard to see the intellectual and political perils of this impulse. The algorithms unwittingly supply readers with texts and
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