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A long-form critique of filter bubbles, profit-driven curation, and how to reclaim a global worldview
The promise that never arrived
The early internet was sold to us as a wide, sunlit plain. A place where anyone could wander through information freely, discovering people, ideas, cultures, and art far beyond anything a physical environment could provide. It was supposed to stretch our imaginations, challenge our assumptions, and introduce us to worlds we never knew existed.
Instead, we have allowed algorithms to build fences around us.
We no longer roam the plain. We now live in villages, small, narrow, curated hamlets of like-minded voices. .We step inside, and the gates close behind us.
This is not accidental. It is engineered.
1. The algorithm: a polite word for a powerful gatekeeper
Algorithm is a deceptively tidy term for what is essentially a set of rules designed to decide what we see. It is presented as objective, neutral, even helpful, “Here is what we think you’ll like.” But these systems do not aim to broaden your horizons. They aim to keep you clicking, scrolling, and consuming.
The mechanism is brutally simple:
- Click on one topic, and it becomes your “preference”.
- Click again, and it becomes your “identity”.
- Click a third time, and the system decides it never needs to show you anything else again.
Your likes become your limits.
The more you engage, the smaller your world becomes. Instead of a rich, messy, unpredictable human experience, you receive a tightly curated stream of content designed to hold your attention at any cost.
2. Digital villages: comfortable, familiar, and dangerous
Online echo-chambers behave like old rural villages, everyone agrees with you, everyone thinks as you do, and outsiders are treated as suspicious strangers. It feels safe, warm, familiar. And intellectually, it is suffocating.
Consider the effect:
- Political feeds that only show you “your side”.
- News tailored to your beliefs rather than your understanding.
- Art and culture filtered down to whatever sells quickest.
- Personalised search results reinforcing the illusion that your view is the dominant one.
- Recommendations that amplify your existing tastes until you cannot imagine anything else.
Even our humour becomes local, in-jokes, recycled memes, shared anger, collective outrage.
The village walls rise higher every year.
3. Who built the village walls? Let us name names
If we are to be frank, we must stop pretending the architects are invisible. The tech giants have created an ecosystem where money dictates visibility.
Google
The world’s most powerful information gatekeeper. Search results are tailored not only by your history, but increasingly by advertisers who bid for visibility. “Relevant results” is often a euphemism for “the highest payer and the most clickable”.
Facebook and Instagram
Platforms that algorithmically rank your personal relationships. Friends disappear from your feed if you do not
interact often enough. The world shrinks to a fragment of your social reality.YouTube
A machine notorious for pushing progressively extreme content because each step deeper into the rabbit hole
increases watch-time. Outrage and shock are profitable, so outrage and shock are what you see.TikTok
The most efficient village-builder of them all. A few seconds of engagement and the “For You” page locks on.
One wrong flick of the thumb and your feed is permanently skewed towards something you only half-liked once.Amazon
A marketplace where visibility is bought. Search results are dominated by sponsored listings and brands with
the deepest pockets. Smaller creators and independent makers are buried unless they learn to play, and pay
for … the game.We must stop speaking about “the algorithm” as if it is a neutral clockwork device. It is a product of human decisions, designed by corporate teams with profit targets.
It is not impartial. It is not magnanimous. It is not acting in your interests.
4. Real-world consequences: everything narrows
This shrinking of perspective is not a metaphor. It produces measurable cultural and political harms.
Polarisation
When you only see people who echo your beliefs, anyone outside your bubble begins to look “wrong”, “dangerous”, or “stupid”. The village turns tribal. Debate becomes war. Nuance disappears.
Radicalisation
Recommendation systems nudge users toward extreme views simply because extreme content is more engaging, and therefore more profitable. It is easier to push people towards rage than towards reflection.
Cultural homogenisation
Art, music, literature, photography, even crafts become filtered by what algorithms think will sell quickly. You are shown what is already popular, not what is brilliant, unusual, or quietly transformative.
Loss of serendipity
One of the most precious things the early internet gave us was chance discovery. You clicked something strange,
followed a link, and ended somewhere unexpected. Now spontaneity is dead. You see what the system pre-selects, not what exists.Intellectual stagnation
When you are only shown content that agrees with you, your thinking calcifies. Curiosity is replaced by
confirmation. The village becomes the world. Everything else falls away.5. Breaking free: reclaiming a global mindset
Escaping the digital village requires deliberate action. It will not happen by accident. The system is not designed for your freedom.
Use search engines that resist personalisation
Try:
- DuckDuckGo, no tracking, no profiling, minimal personalisation.
- Startpage, delivers Google results without attaching them to your identity.
- Brave Search, an independent index with strong privacy tools and fewer incentives to trap you in a loop.
None of these are perfect, but they strip away much of the silent profiling that fuels your bubble.
Diversify your inputs on purpose
Follow people you disagree with. Read newspapers from multiple countries. Explore art and media from cultures far removed from your own. Do not rely on a single platform to show you “what is happening”.
Manually break the pattern
Search things you never normally search. Click topics you don’t usually click. Watch content from outside your
usual interests. Force the algorithm to stop pigeonholing you, or at least make its job harder.Go offline regularly
A walk in the countryside, a conversation in a café, a gallery visit, a book from a charity shop, these expose you to uncurated, unpredictable reality. You are reminded that the world is not arranged in neat, personalised rows.
Remember: the top search results are not the best
On many platforms, “top” means most paid-for, most optimised, or most algorithmically favoured. Page one is not the world. Scroll further. Dig deeper.
Curate your own curiosity
Instead of waiting to be fed content, seek it out intentionally. Follow long-form writers, independent creators, small blogs, niche forums. You are not a passive vessel. You are a human being with agency.
6. The internet can still be a global library – if we fight for it
The tragedy of the modern digital world is that we traded breadth for convenience. We allowed corporations to decide what we see. We let algorithms flatten our horizons until we were peeringnat the world through a straw.
But nothing is inevitable.
Villages can be left behind. Walls can be climbed. Horizons can be restored.
The internet can still be vast – if we refuse to be small.
Break the algorithmic loop. Challenge your comfort. Step back into the global landscape of ideas, art, culture, contradiction, and surprise.
The world is wide. Do not let a machine convince you otherwise.
Back to top ↑ Read the full article: https://ourartsmagazine.com/blog/the-internet-was-supposed-to-expand-our-world-algorithms-have-shrunk-it/
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