In defence of echo chambers

This week, some common terms from naval language, and a map of left behind places. But first, what’s the problem with filter bubbles anyway?

Oh god, here we go again. Not so long ago we were told, repeatedly, that Twitter was a liberal-left echo chamber, which was not the real world, and berated for living inside a filter bubble. Then Elon Musk spent more than the annual GDP of Estonia in a concerted effort to change that, and the rebranded X started to take on a distinctly right-wing flavour, so much of the liberal left has jumped ship to Bluesky.

And now, we’re instead being berated for choosing the wrong filter bubble. On Sunday night, a prominent Westminster journalist publicly chastised those who said they would not follow – might even block – the new account of Tory leader Kemi Badenoch on the younger site. There was much amusement when it turned out not to be the real Kemi Badenoch at all, and suggestions that a journalist of that prominence should probably have checked before pointing people towards it. In all the excitement, the fact this was a bizarre thing to chastise the reading public for at all got a bit lost.

A sort of metaphor. Image: Wikipedia/public domain.

The arguments against living in a social media echo chamber – we’ve all heard them many times, ironically whether we want to or not, but if I’m going to critique them I should really state them first – run roughly as followers. It’s good intellectual hygiene to expose yourselves to alternative viewpoints. Hearing the other side is a good way to test the strength of your arguments. We’ve all seen what it looks like when left and right live in bubbles, consuming completely different media, and it’s awful: in the US today, consensus reality has all but ceased to exist, and look what’s happened there. 

There’s some truth to all of these – my headline was, to some extent, a lie, designed to get you to click; I know, I’m awful – and I don’t think it’ll be brilliant if we end up with two Twitter-style websites, one left and one right. Nonetheless, I think the read-across from this to “it’s bad for people to block politicians they don’t like on social media” is complete and utter nonsense, and for the following reasons…

Filter bubbles aren’t new. Historically, people got most of their news from a newspaper, which they would choose, to a large extent, to accord with their political preferences. Nothing I have read suggests there was hand-wringing about Guardian or Telegraph readers existing in echo chambers during the divisions of the 1980s.

Filter bubbles aren’t restricted to the left. If there had been any such hand-wringing it would not, if we’re honest, have been aimed at the Telegraph readers anyway. This would probably have been justified as it being important to understand why the Tories kept winning, but experience since July – and the fact that right-wingers are not now expected to get their heads around why so many voters switched to Labour – makes me suspect that who is actually in office is irrelevant, and it is only the liberal/left/Remain side that are ever exhorted to get out of their bubble. 

Social media is not the whole world. Even if fewer people read newspapers than they used to, they still watch TV. They listen to the radio and podcasts. They have friends and family, not all of whom are going to agree with their politics. (I found it infuriating, after the Brexit referendum, to be repeatedly told that I was a liberal metropolitan remainer type who’d probably never even met a leaver, strong evidence that the person berating me had not attended even one Elledge family party.) The ideas and opinions someone is exposed to on whatever platform we’re complaining about today are not the sum total of their experience. 

America is not the whole world. It is probably possible in, say, Brooklyn to never encounter a Trump voter, or in Wyoming to never meet a Democrat. I can’t speak for the whole planet, but... Even before Britain’s party system started splintering, you’d have had to try really, really hard in this country to be someone who cares about politics but never hears from the other side. 

Again: social media is not the only place people talk about this stuff.

Nobody is required to listen to anyone, for any reason. If someone started yelling opinions at you in the street or at a party, you’d walk away. Okay, so not everyone who wants to argue about politics on the internet is going to be rude or abusive, but here’s the thing: people can choose not to talk to anyone for any reason they like, and it doesn’t matter that you think it’s stupid! The rules of social interaction should not radically change just because it’s happening on the internet, rather than in person! 

The big one that I think gets forgotten though is:

Not everyone is doing this professionally. 

I am not going to start blocking people for presenting ideas I dislike, because part of my job is to attempt to understand politics and public opinion, and I will be worse at it if I start blocking prominent right-wingers or pretending alternative views don’t exist. That’s true of anyone who works in news, or in polling, or who seeks votes, or makes policy, or works in a bunch of other bits of public life. 

But that group does not contain everyone on the internet. Some people on BlueSky just want to argue about television. Or look at pictures of their mutuals’ pets. Or meet like minded perverts, or whatever else they want to do that does not relate to ~the discourse~ in any way. If their experience of social media is going to be made less pleasant by being exposed to the undiluted thoughts of the Leader of the Opposition at random intervals, they’re entirely within their rights to block them. They can do what the hell they want, and their reasons are quite frankly none of our business. 

At least part of the exhortation from journalists to better understand reactionary voters is, I suspect, a sublimated guilt. A lot of us missed Brexit, or Trump, or Trump again, and feel embarrassed we didn’t see it coming. When they say “You should spend more time listening to alternative views!” what they really mean is “We should”. 

But most people are not journalists. They are not required to read alternative viewpoints or test the strength of their arguments. It’s not their job. 

It’s ours. 

Some self-promotion cleverly disguised as content

Hey, the extremely sexy Italian version of 47 Borders got a reprint! That’s exciting.

Thanks, Mark! 

This is just your weekly reminder that you can buy the book, in a version conveniently written in English for your reading pleasure, from Waterstones, Foyles, Amazon or my American publisher, The Experiment.

I’m hoping to see some of you tonight at my reading at Backstory in Balham. Say hi! The secret password to let me know you’re a newsletter reader is “Fire Jasper”. If you can’t make that, though, this is tomorrow:

Some common English phrases with naval origins 

On Sunday, I went to the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, then took a boat upriver to Battersea.¹ On Monday, I found myself on a canal boat – more on that anon – then discovered that the Rest is History had begun a new series on the life of Horatio Nelson. If ever the universe was telling me to write something, it was surely this.

“Learn the ropes”: Pleasingly literal. Sailing ships involve a complex system of sails and rigging. To be able to help sail one, you need to know which rope does what. 

“The bitter end”: Less literal than you think. The “bitt” or “bitter” was the post on deck you tied the anchor chain or rope to. To reach the “bitter end” when anchoring meant you’d run out of line – which was, if you were still moving, bad news.

“...the cut of his jib”: The “jib” is the triangular sail at the front of a ship, whose style offeres clues as to which part of the world it originated from. If you like the cut of someone’s jib, you can trust they’re a decent sort, and probably not French.