Ben Thompson: belief

Transcript context

…Per user, is Facebook or Twitter worse at creating these ideological filter bubbles? If indeed you think either’s a problem? I’ve thought about this a lot and I’ve written about the filter bubble issue. I do wonder if it’s one of those things that makes so much . . . It’s almost too neat. Obviously this must be a problem, but is it a problem? You think about the age groups that are the most polarized, and they tend towards — I think these are older generations — and you look at things like cable news, and how much is that actually driving the filter bubble effect? I do think there is more of an effect than Facebook acknowledges. They released this study a few years ago that said there was no filter effect, and it was a very problematic study in all kinds of ways. It’s bothered me that they never acknowledged those problems and updated that. At the same time, I think it’s a little easy and cliché to blame Facebook when Facebook may actually just be a reflection of society at large. I think the attributing causation to these companies when, if you think about how they work and how they have power in the market, it is by giving people what they want, which it follows — people want to be polarized, they’re going to get polarized things. What is the chicken-and-egg connection there? I’m a little more skeptical than the general narrative that Facebook is to blame for everything. Now I have a few questions about what I call the Ben Thompson production function. How does being from Wisconsin shape what you’ve done?…

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