Facebook 'fesses up to running an ideological echo chamber

Limited Use then...

it's not as if they can use these 'pretty obvious' findings to create a real science breakthrough like an SEP field.

I read the news on Google Currents / Newsstand / Whatever it's called today and that at least appears to do article selection based on what I've read before. I have two observations: firstly if you read an article outside your normal range of topics you'll suddenly find your news feed (or whatever it's called) crammed with articles about that one topic. Secondly if you want to read an article outside your normal list of topics because, I don't know maybe you like a broad range of opinions, it can be very hard to access that content.

Surely I can't be the only person that wants to read (as an example) articles from The Daily Mail and The Guardian?

A breeding ground for extremism then...

But I think we already knew that...?

If you only listen to like-minded opinions you go into a self-reinforcing spiral which can only end in extremism. Or possibly alcohol.

If you never hear an opposing view or not enough that are not in agreement with you, there is no mitigation for it.

Somewhat like the conspiracy theory nutters at the local pub, they had to at least try and keep it halfway plausible because there were normal people around to ask e.g. "why is that duck on your head painted blue?". Online you can filter out all the tricky questions and you end up with something completely mental but convinced it's absolutely accurate because nobody within your circle challenged you to consider where you would get that much custard. Or even "why not purple?".

"why did you bother readin[g] this far?"

-Because we find your writing informative, Simon.

Oh? Were we supposed to answer that?

It really doesn't help that facebook will often just not show things in my feed until a day late, like it was specifically hiding it from me.

Don't disturb me with new ideas

Given the ubiquitous invitation "seeks like-minded person...", Facebook, Google etc. merely satisfy the majority preference not to be unsettled by anything novel (presumably as they hide behind the sofa).

Facebook... News...?

Now there's a concept... getting one's news on Facebook. I'm assuming it's like getting news on Twitter. A splash headline and maybe one paragraph?

When the authors considered the likely sharing of political positions among friends, they found “24% of the hard content shared by liberals’ friends are cross-cutting, compared to 35% for conservatives.”

So now the question becomes, *why* did they share it? Is it a case of mocking the opposition (eg: "Look at what [opponent] said about [contentious issue]!") or actual interest in an opposing viewpoint?

Depends on what is done with the "cross cutting" content

I see friends on either end of the political spectrum occasionally sharing "cross cutting" content with outage (typical of the conservatives) or sarcasm (typical of the liberals)

t isn't changing their minds; simply reading content that challenges one's viewpoint doesn't affect that viewpoint if your mind is already closed.

I only read The Reg because everyone here agrees with me. Vote me up, fellas!

I'd like more active input please FB.

Google's News & Weather app on Android has a section called "Suggested for you" and for each article there it specifically asks me if I'm interested in the topic of that article: right now it is asking me "Are you interested in Archimedes?" with an up-thumb and a down-thumb. If I click the up-thumb then in the future I'll get more articles about Archimedes. I like this because I can down-thumb topics such as One Direction and never have to hear about them again.

This study is flat out wrong.

I haven't FBed for about three years. There was plenty of "cross-cutting content". Sounds to me like another academic article that selected data to prove their predetermined conclusion.