Explained: What Are Algorithms And How Do They Filter Our Social Bubble?

If you didn't visit Indiatimes.com by typing it in your web browser and are reading this article, there's a very good chance you came across it through an algorithm -- either through Google's search results or Facebook's social feed.

Algorithms dominate our present day online world, and they aren't just complex and difficult to understood but they are also viewed with suspicion for how they function and who controls them, especially with regards to social media algorithms.

Algorithm: Origin of the word and its concept

The origin of the algorithm does not belong to the West as many would have thought; rather the credit goes to the province of Khw?rezm which sits along the borders of modern-day Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.

A thousand years ago, this land was a home to a very famous resident, Abu Abdullah Muhammad ibn Musa Al-Khwarizmi, a scholar, mathematician and an astronomer of repute. He lived and flourished in present-day Baghdad which used to be the world¡¯s centre of learning back then.

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Today he is popularly known as the father of Algebra and Algorithms. The Latinization of his name Al-Khwarizmi gave us the 18th century "algoritmi", which eventually became the word "algorithm".

How is the algorithm applied online?

In terms of information access on the Internet, algorithms can be simply defined as a set or compilation of rules and data that make decisions about what the users will be shown on any platform when they are online.

For this purpose, unique algorithms are created for every individual who uses any web site based on the search history of that particular individual, which ultimately means no two people will have the exact same search results for the same searched keyword.

As commonly understood, algorithms are everywhere and used in every computing process. There are many common examples of algorithms, from sorting sets of numbers to finding routes through maps to displaying information on a screen.

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But apart from its commendable functionality, algorithms have a flip side, too. For anyone who has watched the 2020 Netflix documentary, The Social Dilemma, it would be quite easy to comprehend what goes behind the making of so called manipulative algorithms by big tech giants like Facebook and Google in order to attract addiction to their platforms and harvest personal data to target users with ads which have so far gone largely unregulated.

Algorithms create 'filter bubbles'

In English language, the term bubble is often used with a negative connotation which means being 'in one's comfort zone' or 'isolated from reality'. Following that line comes the term ¡°filter bubble¡± which refers to the results of the algorithms that dictate what humans encounter online. According to Eli Pariser, an internet activist who coined this word in his book of the same name, those algorithms create ¡°a unique universe of information for each of us which fundamentally alters the way we encounter ideas and information.¡±

In today's ideologically polarized world, we tend to follow people and pages whose beliefs align with ours, and read content that we agree with and barely expose ourselves to a different worldview. This crisis of limited views is further strengthened with online web sites offering personalized content selections, based on our browsing history, age, gender, location, and other data.

This quite frequently results in a bombardment of information or news articles or social media posts supporting our current opinions and perspectives to ensure that we enjoy what we see which effectively limits our scope of moving beyond the bubbles created by algorithms.

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Pariser, in his famous 2011 TED talk, explains how the internet at first seems to work as a connection with the world, something that brings everyone together, is actually doing the opposite. Pariser argues that algorithms learn who we are, and create our filter bubble based on what we click on and how long we spend looking at a particular content. He also warns that these filter bubbles can and will negatively affect society, because algorithms are confining people to their small bubble of information, and polarizing their opinions.

While the filter bubble results in an ideological isolation, it has also, as per Pariser, created the echo chamber in which an individual's beliefs are amplified or reverberated in a closed system where differing opinions are shunned away, often leading to confirmation bias.

Obviously, algorithms aren't all bad, as they serve a very important purpose online -- helping you get to the information you desire in a convenient fashion, otherwise you'll get overwhelmed by information overload. Having said that, it's equally important for us to acknowledge the flip-side of algorithms; how they could be subtly, unknowingly influencing our decision making. All of us as individuals and society at large need to take steps to mitigate some of the harmful side-effects of the abundant use of unchecked algorithms in every facet of our online existence.

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