Breaking out of the bubble

[liv]

Most of what's going on in my corner of Google+ is... discussion about the awfulness of Google's so-called real names policy. There's a lot of speculation as to why Google, with their previously good reputation, is apparently shooting for evil and incompetent at the same time. One of the more plausible theories that's been proposed is that they want to reclaim the part of search territory where you find out what's going on in the lives of non-celebrity individuals. That is, if you want to look up your first crush or that guy you worked with years ago and see how they're getting on these days, you're likely to end up searching Facebook or LinkedIn. This harms Google's monopoly, because Google can't put its ads on those sites.

It also transpires that if you search while logged in to Google, it prioritizes results that it thinks are connected to people in your G+ circles. This, on top of everything else, is yet another huge Do Not Want flag for me.

So there's an intersection of privacy issues and, well, censorship issues. The privacy stuff is more important as a matter of principle; revealing people's personal information for profit puts people in real, physical danger. But the censorship stuff has more direct negative effect on me personally. Basically I'm in a position where I can get away with having my whole life online. It's a nuisance, I'd rather not, and that's why I put effort into keeping personal stuff (like this journal) separate from my near-unique professional name. But I'm not going to lose my job or be found by a violent stalker because of Google, so I'm complaining about it on behalf of other people who are in that danger.

However I really really don't want Google to mess with my search results! This tendency has been a problem for a while, but the whole issue with Google+ and the way they're pushing profiles is unquestionably making things worse. The question is, though, what can I do about it? I was already making a point of logging out of Google before doing any searches, because of vague concerns about privacy. One thing that G+ might well lure me into doing is staying logged in with Plus in another window, because there's this constantly updating stream of interesting stuff that just technically works better than either FB or DW. The conversations this week have convinced me that it's a bad idea to do that. I'm going to start handling Google with the same long spoon I've been using for FB: only access it from a separate browser, and use Chrome (yes, I know, ironic) in its "incognito" mode so that it deletes cookies after each session. (Incidentally, one of the conspiracy theories I've seen is that Google is banning "weird-looking" names deliberately in order to exclude power users, people who are tech-savvy enough to take this kind of precaution and tell their friends to do so as well.)

The problem is that I'm not sure this is good enough. I'm sure Google can get plenty of information from me when I'm logged out, given I usually search from the same computer and the same IP address, or from my Android phone and goodness knows how much data that's sending back to Google. Refusing cookies and turning off JavaScript would help a bit, but it makes using the internet painful and I don't think the trade-off would be worth it. This is a problem from the privacy perspective, unquestionably, but as I've said I don't really mind how much Google knows about me. I'm basically ok with accepting precision-targeted adverts in exchange for two really useful free services: futuristic search so awesome it seems like magic, and essentially unlimited online email. However, Google+ has started me worrying about how much of that data is going to get passed on to shady orgs, or in the worst case scenario even broadcast to the whole world. But the thing that's got me really worried is that Google is going to use the data not only to feed its advertising machine, but to serve me what it thinks I want to hear, not a true sample of what's on the internet.

Of course, this is a bigger problem than just Google. With the information overload of the modern internet, I rely just as much on recs from trusted sources to sift the material, as on simply searching. And that has even more of a tendency to just point me to stuff I already agree with. American blogger delux_vivens very astutely pointed out that, regarding analysis of the riots, people kept linking to penny red's essay [but] ...not seeing any poc blogging about it from england being bandied around. That's not even about missing perspectives I disagree with, but any perspectives at all from outside my mostly-white, middle-class social circles.

I think there's an issue of outrage addiction tangled up in this. My crowd (and I'm just as guilty as anyone) tend to link, reblog and retweet stuff that shows the bad guys being bad in a fairly uncritical way. InjusticeFacts, for example, which just accepts submissions from anyone who feels like "reporting" something and for preference uses grammatical English and throws in a few numbers. Or that satirical, made-up quote from Cameron about how he used to smash things up when he was a student that got reposted all over the place to show that the rich and the political establishment are morally corrupt. Or a thing that came up on my Tumblr feed declaring that Caterpillar is the most evil company in the world, because they sell bulldozers to Israel that Israel uses for bulldozing homes in Palestinian areas. Sure, it's reasonable to object to this, but seriously? More evil than companies who actually manufacture chemical weapons or sell arms banned by international treaty to regimes with much worse human rights records than Israel? I'm sure I've fallen for this sort of thing more than once, I'm sure there's plenty of bad things I'm outraged about that never really happened (and goodness knows there's enough real evil going on in the world that isn't getting media attention).

I'm finding it very hard to avoid assuming that the stuff I already agree with is in fact better than the stuff I repudiate. Obviously, that's why I agree with it in the first place! And I don't especially want to get my news and analysis from sources that are racist, homophobic, uncritically pro-establishment etc. I don't want to start supporting the Murdoch media empire in order to get a more varied philosophical diet! It feels as if outside my bubble is not the real, unfiltered world, but a bigger and more noxious bubble. For example I picked up a copy of the Daily Express that someone had left on a train, trying to be open-minded and not snobby, and what confronted me but an editorial as bad as any parody about how asylum seekers are living in luxury multi-million pound homes at public expense. If that's the alternative to a self-reinforcing cycle where I'm friends with people who already agree with me, and they recommend me things that will strengthen the opinions I already hold, I'm not sure that it's worth it.

Also outside the bubble can be genuinely a scary place. There are way too many people out there who quite literally want me dead because I'm Jewish, or think that it's a high ethical goal to kill my loved ones who are disabled. Not to mention the intense, scary enforcement of rigid gender roles; I really don't need a lot of insinuations in my headspace about how women just innately can't succeed in technical fields, or how fat bodies are disgusting, or how every shadow hides a rapist.

So, do you have any ideas, either technical or social, for how to get access to a wider range of opinions, views and perspectives?

Comments

[hairyears]

Out-of-the-bubble information requires more effort than you expect. When I had the long commute to work, I read the Financial Times every day, and one other paper, one day a week - whatever I could pick up on the train, and always a different paper to the previous week's.

Yes, I read the Telegraph. And the Sun. I stopped reading the Grauniad because I found myself agreeing with so much of it - nodding along in a ritual of reaffirmation without learning anything new, and getting steadily stupider by rebreathing the stale air of the bubble - and I would've stopped picking up the Independent, but it is rarely discarded.

I read the Daily Mail, some weeks. All of it. Just because something is deeply distasteful, or a lie, shouldn't stop you reading: this stuff is the mental landscape of millions of Britain's citizens, and if I hadn't read it I'd have recoiled in horror and anger at the things I heard in Somerset country pubs last week.

I hate reading it: I can feel the lies seeping in, poisoning my attitudes, and I catch myself nodding when some skilfully-written propaganda trap leads me in... If I read it for a year, and my social circle was the stereotypical small-town golf club bores (or worse, expats), I would probably become a Daily Mail Reader.

Which is why I make a point of making air-holes in the bubble, any bubble, even a nice fluffy Guardian-reading Twitterati bubble. We're all susceptible to it - and there are some pretty unpleasant and illiberal prejudices lurking in London's leafy groves of Grauniaditarianism, among people who know nothing of their neighbours in richer and poorer parishes alike.

Actually, I should stop: that you've posted this at all shows you're well aware of that bubble, too. Possibly more so than I am.

My advice: find some harmless hobby with a regular club meeting that really does draw people from all walks of life. It's a rarity, but such things do exist: when our Aikido club moved out of the City to the East End, it became a healthy mix of people and a welcome social 'air hole'... But I suspect that such things are rare, and that you will have to look pretty hard.

[liv]

Yes, I think you're right, I need a hobby that will bring me into contact with a wider range of people. The Jewish community helps a bit, especially here, because I've found one of those increasingly rare pockets of mostly working-class Jewish life. Also my gaming group is actually pretty good, you'd expect people who meet up to play German-style boardgames would skew very geeky / middle-class and probably liberal-intellectual too, but locally this isn't much the case. At the moment I'm using up a lot of my hobby time going to the gym, which isn't very sociable but I think it is worth it for me to build up my fitness. Still, something I can work on.

Regarding reading material, I don't know. Yes, I do want to read stuff that I disagree with, but I don't necessarily want to put myself in the path of the Murdoch media machine. There are definitely quite powerful organizations that really want to influence me in particular directions, and I'm unwilling to let them into my headspace just to prove to myself how open-minded I am. Readers as much as writers are susceptible to the kinds of assumptions that lead to trying to have a "balanced" debate about whether climate change actually exists.

The Guardian isn't too pernicious for me because I can see how ridiculous it can be. The Indy, yeah, I'm more likely to just let it reinforce what I already think. The trouble with tabloids is not just that they're infuriating, but that I'm extremely biased against the sort of simple vocab and sentence structure they use. I'm unlikely to take the Mail or the Sun seriously because reading them feels like the mental equivalent of trying to chew candy-floss.

I think for me it's more useful to read newspapers from various countries, than to try and cover the spectrum of political opinion within the UK newspapers. That spectrum is extremely constrained anyway! I'm lucky enough to live in a world where there are plenty of English-language news sources available online, which includes in my pocket wherever I am. (I don't commute via Tube, so I'm never really far from the datastream.) So I think what I need to do is to resolve to read Libé and Al Jazeera more often, rather than the Mail.

[hairyears]

Reading papersfrom different countries: you do know about the International and Tribune?

It's a weekly compilation of op-eds and in-depth pieces from the World's 'Heavyweight' press - Washy Post, New York Times, La Monde, and our own Grauniad, Times and Inependent. Among others.

The cartoons are the pick of the crop from around the World.

[liv]

Thanks for that rec. And it looks like they have a sensible Android app too, so I'll put that on my phone and see if that helps give me a broader picture.