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Ask HN: How do I escape the echo chamber?

7 points by marcus_holmes ↗ HN
I know my social feed is an echo chamber. I have tried to cultivate a varied group of friends so that I get to see alternative points of view, but it's not working. How can I see a wider variety of opinions in my social feed?

13 comments

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KirinDave
The answer to this is trivial: find people with dissenting opinions and put them in your feed.

Apple fan? Find a pro-Android site. I'm an increasingly adamant progressive, but I make sure to read r/the_donald (if only to scan their vile talking points). I make sure to read twitter feeds of people deeply critical not only of Silicon Valley, but of capitialism entirely.

But be aware that lots of people engage in deliberately manipulative behavior in social networks these days. You need to be extremely critical of everything you read as you widen your social network, until you can safely weed out the bad actors you may have introduced.

noonespecial
>I make sure to read r/the_donald (if only to scan their vile talking points).

I did the same. It's easy to assume that Trump supporters agree with all of Trump's wacky policies and so must be horrible people. Closer to the truth is that very often they only focused on one issue that they thought was very important to them and think the rest of it is just as nutty as you do.

It's a good thing to understand their positions as best we can because the mid-terms are coming in just 2 years and we're going to need their help to reign in some of this guy's excesses. The US can (and has) survived unfortunate choices for president. Its built into the system.

KirinDave
Ugh.

The problem is that these people, while the majority, are just happy to ignore or go along with basically anything and anyone's talking points. Folks like VA-issue voters have a reason you can empathize with, but the harm they're causing to get the "single issue" that wasn't even promised on redressed is stunning.

Sorry to vent at you, I just think these single-issue folks are the worst. They're the ultimate selfish category of voter. In many cases, it wasn't even the democrats who dropped the ball on them, they just have this weird idea DJT is an outsider somehow and not a massively connected rich man with ties to the GOP.

marcus_holmes
I tried this - I have an anti-vaxxer "friend". Didn't work, the algorithm doesn't publish any of her stuff, I have to go and check her feed specifically for the weird stuff she posts.

I have another pro-Trump friend, again, nothing he says makes it into the feed.

Is there some critical quantity of "alt-friends" you need to balance?

KirinDave
It's just quantity. But also I have about 6 bookmarks that I open all at once. So there is something of deliberate "dipping into the pool" you need to do.

I youtube sometimes and my fans have asked me what that "Absolute Despair" bookmark hotbar is. It is this.

For me, so much of my family hates me, my lifestyle, my profession, and my refusal to put their kids through religious college that I can never really escape.

labrador
I tend to be in a liberal bubble chamber. What I do is bookmark conservative websites in a bookmark folder and then periodically open all tabs into a new window to read. My conservative sites of choice for what it's worth are The American Conservative, National Review, The Spectator, The Federalist, The Weekly Standard and then a couple of religious sites for good measure, The National Catholic Review and Commentary (Conservative Jewish.)
marcus_holmes
Same. I have some oddball climate denial sites I love to read. Doesn't seem to matter to The Feed.

Good suggestion on actually making a bookmark list and reviewing it every so often though :)

imaginenore
Go on Youtube. There are tons of opposing view points from left/right, liberal/conservative sides.

FB is echo chamber central. Your FB "friends" just freak out, start calling you names if you say something contrary to their beliefs. Many of the people I considered rather rational started making completely nonsensical arguments.

I've always considered myself rather liberal, but watching the recent developments, alt-right arguments make a lot of sense.

marcus_holmes
this is my problem. I want FB to be less of an echo chamber. I'd like my posts to be places where people of all stripes can debate each other, because it's one of the few places they meet. But the algorithm seems determined to defeat me :(
icedchai
Close your Facebook account, stop looking at Twitter, start researching things independently.
marcus_holmes
Meh, I'm an immigrant. FB is the best way of keeping up with friends and family I don't want to lose touch with.

It's a bit like saying the cure for heart disease is to not have a heart...

a_j_c
Don't forget to add alternative views from the left either (most have FB pages or Twitter feeds). Some of my favorite are: Counterpunch, Libcom, Mother Jones, Truthdig, and on the more "cheeky" side, I'd check out r/LateStageCapitalism.
senjindarashiva
Start a subscription for two weekly newspapers with preferably different political standpoints. Read all of them, this forces you out of your search bubbles while simultaneous giving you the option of slowing down your news and information intake