# Filter and Label your Email ## On the Reading Eli Pariser's "Filter Bubble" thesis introduced the thought that major media/social media outlets apply a user's attributes, characteristics, and interests in order to create an echo chamber effect that prioritizes stimuli that represent the user, rather than challenging any aspect of them. Farnam Street's article on the topic relates the notion to advertisements: every time we click or view a page "Google gains to collect information about us and to feed us advertisements" that are targeted to grab our attention (Carr). The compulsivity of surfing the web adds a level of addiction to the action. With every BuzzFeed quiz we take, another is advertised to you with a similar, eye-cathing title; but the "filter bubble" is not limited to adsense material. In later analyses, Pariser found that for the 9% of Facebook users who reported a political affiliation, the posts and media they were exposed to tended to be more geared towards them. Liberal Facebook users had deprioritized conservative media, and conservative users had deprioritized liberal media. The affect such a mark-down of posts could have, reportedly, is a polarization of the people exposed to the echo chamber of media they see daily, causing a tendency to shift towards either extreme on the political scale. Although, the "filter bubble" does make it easier for people to connect with others of similar beliefs, it causes a disconnect and absense of alternative views from being expressed properly. If such structures become the foundation for the future of targeted media and political beliefs, democracy could be shifted by the whim of Facebook, Google, or other companies alike. ## Screenshots ### Label with Filtered Results ![](https://i.imgur.com/rwPktOY.png) ### Filter Description ![](https://i.imgur.com/heeOsFM.png)