# Filtering



*I filtered my email so that emails from the president and two vice presidents of the Northeastern Entrepreneurs Club would move automatically to an E-Club folder!*

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**Had everyone in the country learned and used “crap detection” skills, would we be so affected by “fake news” and media manipulation, or would we end up in filter bubbles?**

I love cake--especially red velvet. But I also love chicken ceasar salad. These two foods are undoubtedly polarizing, but they are able to coexist in the same diet: in the same space but separated. Now imagine I dig a fork into a chicken ceasar salad one day and it turns out to be cake. Imagine I dig a fork into a red velvet cake one day and it turns out to be salad. Is it salad? Is it cake? Should I call the police?


This is essentially how fake news functions. You take a bite out of a piece of information that you see online, but it turns out to be an entirely different thing. Appearances can be misleading. Information can be misleading.

Let's say that you are a salad fanatic, and you are used to consuming salads that look traditionally the same. One day, you stumble across a salad that looks similar to the one in the picture above. It looks very much Salad. But is it? Unbeknownst to you, the salad is actually a cake--but you are so used to consuming salad that looks like Salad that you believe that it is... well... a salad. Maybe I got carried away, but you get the point.

Often times, as humans, we consume what we want to believe, and this leads us to consuming disinformation. Disinformation can coincide with our political or cultural beliefs, and we consume content that perpetuates our ideologies. We are failing to think critically, as our brains are puppets strung along by the information age. Everything we could have ever known is at our fingertips. What we believe to be true is now "used out of context and weaponized by people who know that falsehoods based on a kernel of truth are more likely to be believed and shared," as said succinctly by Claire Wardle. Technology is warfare.


The information war utilizes several weapons, another being filter bubbles. Since we are constantly fed and consume information that we believe to be true, we become stuck. We are shot down by a system that we think is benefiting us, and we become entrenched in our own beliefs. We choke on the spoon that feeds us. Filter bubbles pour a cocktail of "social proof, availability bias, confirmation bias, and bias from disliking/liking" down our throats, without us even knowing it. We never question as to why our scrolling journeys are so streamlined and geared toward exactly what we want. We are fooled into believing we are internet crusaders, stumbling upon treasures after long journeys. But really, the treasure maps were already drawn for us. The treasure serves as a block of cheese at the end of a rat's labyrinth.

So what happens when we do Google advanced searches? What if we scrutinized sources for credibility and scanned every fine line? Would we win the information war? Or further it?

I believe taking more steps to ascertain the credibility of the sources we consume would help immensely in filtering out most *explicitly* "fake" news; however, most fake news in the current age comes across as genuine. For example, Wardle claims that satire is a form of fake news, albeit the lowest level of such. A reputable comedy or news website may publish a satirical article, which would count as fake news that is "credible." Satire can also be interpreted as "just a type of humor," so is it fake after all? There is some nuance in what is credible when fake news masquerades as genuine.

The ability to refine our searches, especially through [Google's Advanced Search Engine](https://www.google.com/advanced_search), pushes us more deeply into our respective filter bubbles and echo chambers. Now that we know exactly what to look for and how to look for it, we no longer need to dig through any other information. Our filter bubbles have turned into digital vacuums.

For personal ease of use and fear of filter bubbles, I might refrain from using Google search tactics unless I truly need to. I fear the salad that is a cake. I fear the cake that is a salad. But man... they look like they taste so damn good.