Facebook Filters and Smug Liberalism Part 2

Another interesting note, I’ve noticed that most of the sources I see complaining about the filters on Facebook are liberal sources trying to understand how Trump won.  In turn the Washington post found that these are the people most likely to unfriend someone over politics, both online and offline (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2014/10/21/liberals-are-more-likely-to-unfriend-you-over-politics-online-and-off/).

There is a lot of recent writing on the “smug style” of liberalism that liberals just seem to have noticed (http://www.vox.com/2016/4/21/11451378/smug-american-liberalism, http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2016/04/liberals-smug-condescending), and I suspect that this has a lot to do with the filters that others are complaining about.  It’s not just that people aren’t exposed to others viewpoints, but when they are they instinctively dismiss them.  For instance it’s easy for a smug liberal to dismiss a conservative as being a dumb uneducated hick, and in response conservatives can dismiss liberals as arrogant or unconcerned with their lives.  Neither of these are inherent to technology and I suspect that removing the filters on Facebook wouldn’t resolve the whole problem.

The memetic face of  "smug liberalism"

Facebook Filters and Smug Liberalism Part 1

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We were talking about filter bubbles the other day in class and I found an article on them on CNN.  Facebook Shows You What You Want to See Post-Election (http://money.cnn.com/2016/11/09/technology/filter-bubbles-facebook-election/) describes how Facebook uses filters to make sure their users only see content that they like.  However, I have to admit that I’m still skeptical of how influential these filters are.  While I have no doubts that they exist, I’ve personally noticed that my news feed is more dominated by political posts that I disagree with than ones I agree with.  I suspect of the major filters that people may be facing is self imposed.  I’m sure that everyone has had had an argument or two over the last election, but increasingly people have let these arguments ruin friendships that they have.  Increasingly people have been letting politics ruin their friendships as noted in Politico’s article Trump and Clinton wreck Facebook friendships (http://www.politico.com/story/2016/08/donald-trump-hillary-clinton-facebook-friendships-227175), this is what I personally suspect to be the largest filter on Facebook.