## Filter and label your email

**February 12th - Filtering**

Have you ever wondered why everything you see online seems to align with your particular interests? Or why you rarely see content that clashes with your beliefs? In effect, everything we click, watch or share gets stored in a personalized algorithm that dictates what we encounter online. This phenomenon was coined by Eli Pariser as "the filter bubble effect": websites store each breadcrumb of data we leave behind and filter our content into media we find palatable and engaging.

Although filter bubbles may not come off as harmful, they prevent us from seeing the world in a balanced way. As described in an [article by Farnam Street](https://fs.blog/2017/07/filter-bubbles/), filter bubbles create echo chambers: we don’t realize that everything we see is being filtered and that other perspectives exist. Even social media platforms, like Facebook, prioritize news that’s popular without us even realizing, instead of news that’s important and, most-oftentimes, real. ([Parisier, 2015](https://medium.com/backchannel/facebook-published-a-big-new-study-on-the-filter-bubble-here-s-what-it-says-ef31a292da95))

In the same way as sites filter our content, we as users can also filter our feeds and the information we see online, such as our emails. For instance, I was able to filter and label all the emails containing relevant [news from Northeastern](https://i.imgur.com/hpZ2mGv.png) and from [my class mailing list](https://i.imgur.com/aneHLul.png) in my Northeastern Outlook account. So, instead of having to look for each independent email, they all get automatically sorted into a [specific folder](https://i.imgur.com/LvrCzH4.png).

In essence, filters can make our feed more engaging and provide tools to increase efficiency. However, it is important to consider that they may also be distorting our understanding of the world, insulating us from opposing perspectives without us even noticing.