AllSides frees people from filter bubbles so they can better understand the world — and each other.

A filter bubble occurs when someone is only exposed to news that confirms his or her beliefs, or solely interacts with like-minded peers. The result? A society where people only see one side, leading to a highly polarized political environment.

 

How Filter Bubbles Are Created

With the sheer amount of content available today — online, in print and on TV — we have to filter most of it out. 

We often do this by blocking information that is hard to process or digest — information that doesn't align with our current beliefs.  

A great deal of this is unintentional. Social media platforms and search engines use advanced algorithms to provide users with information that specifically aligns with their political preferences. They feed users information and content that they will like, based on their interests, location, past searches, click history, and more. 

In addition, the 24-hour news cycle serves more to inflame than to provide balanced news. Media bias is the norm, and both right-wing and left-wing outlets build loyal customer bases with highly partisan reporting, because people keep coming back to hear what they want to hear. 

In the end, the only information we receive actively confirms our belief systems.

Our relationships become more and more homogeneous, and dissenting views are either not tolerated or punished, meaning social groups often retain a uniform partisan identity.

The Filter Bubble Effect

As filter bubbles develop, we become confidently ignorant. A study from the University of Colorado noted that “people's attitudes become more extreme after they speak with like-minded others.” When we only talk to people who agree, we are much less likely to entertain an opposing viewpoint. Shutting out alternative viewpoints ultimately inhibits nuanced thinking.

This creates the hyper-polarization we see exploding in developed nations around the world. Cooperation across political divides is becoming near impossible. No longer do we see the other side as merely wrong, we also see them as evil. When this is the case, we can't work together.

This division causes dysfunction in our news, politics, communities, and even in our personal lives.

What We Can Do About Filter Bubbles

We need to add diversity to each person’s bubble - diversity in ideas, geography, identity, and background.

  

With diversity in thought and relationships, we can appreciate and talk about differences, collaborate, and engage in productive problem solving — and politicians will once again reflect their voters. 

How AllSides Pops Filter Bubbles

  • Balanced news. Our daily news coverage shows news from all sides of the political spectrum. We give readers multiple takes on the same issue — not just one slant.
  • Media Bias Ratings. We've rated the bias of nearly 600 media outlets, using a patented, fair, transparent methodology that makes bias easy to spot.
  • AllSides for Schools. We work in classrooms to equip students with news media literacy skills, listening/conversation skills, and respectful dialogue habits.
  • Mismatch. By connecting people who have different backgrounds and perspectives, we provide opportunities for respectful discussions on issues facing our country.
  • Balanced Dictionary. Making it easy to get multiple perspectives on key terms and issues.
  • Civil Discourse. We partner with Living Room Conversations and other civic dialogue groups to promote respectful conversations with those we may disagree with.
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  • The following are your articles on Civil Rights
  • From the left

  • America's broken promise to Black people


    Caleb Gayle



    There's a familiar promise embedded in my head: You can become anything.

    Parents, teachers, pastors, graduation speakers, and even melodically-gifted Sesame Street muppet characters repeated that promise to me when I was a child. But as a Black kid growing up in Oklahoma, I'd also hear another refrain, one that rebuffed "proper English": We can't have nothing. I knew I'd spend my life balancing the promise of endless possibility for personal achievement with the reality that Black folk in America can't seem to have anything — or at least, we can't have anything permanently.

    My parents and grandparents came to America in the 1960s and '70s from Jamaica. By almost every measure, my parents have achieved the American Dream. My dad and mom, though they did not receive their college degrees until well into their 40s, have established themselves in their careers. My dad climbed rung after slippery rung to high levels of management in a company he has spent his life helping. And my mom is a nurse with nearly 30 years of experience. They forged their own paths in this country, moving far from the excitement of New York for the enduringly flat and predictable state of Oklahoma. They bought a home in which to raise their three kids. They did everything in their power to ensure their own children had access to opportunity. And in many ways, it worked. All of us went to college. I went to grad school — twice — and picked up three degrees from institutions that made me look around wondering how I got there and if I was good enough to stay because so few of my fellow students looked like me.

    One sibling, who finished college two years ago, is working actively in criminal justice reform and is considering law school. He actually has the time to take a break from college, which he attended on a full-ride scholarship, to work on changing the world, or at least a piece of it, before going to what will likely be a highly-ranked law school. My other sibling is still in school but studying for the GRE to prepare for a Ph.D., or perhaps a Master's degree, or perhaps time doing work elsewhere. But she has that thing that my grandparents immigrated here to achieve: optionality. My siblings each have a choice in their own destinies — or at least I hope they do.

    Jacob Blake likely thought that all the struggle and mire his ancestors and their counterparts endured gave him that same privilege. His grandparents, like my own, had survived far too much racism for their children to become anything but exactly what they desired. According to Blake's dad, "My father was there for the first march in Washington. He went through Selma to Montgomery. He went across the Edmund Pettus. He marched for open housing in Evanston, Illinois."

    Yet Blake was nearly killed by police for making the relatively benign decision to leave his car and break up a fight.

    You can become anything. But we can't have nothing.

    I used to think that in my home, I'd be safe, so long as I didn't leave the house looking like the "threat" some white people fear I could be fine. But then Breonna Taylor did that. She chose to be in her house, yet she was the target of a deadly ambush by police officers.

    The list goes on. And the longer that list grows, the more I'm convinced that, underpinning the resistance to our objection to being murdered is the not-so-subtle notion that we, Black folks, clamoring to leave the margins, are asking for too much. Some feel we have been given enough; how could we want more? They'll use stories of my family — Black folks "succeeding" — as a sign that we have enough and, more dangerously, that my family's trajectory is the pathway by which all Black people should be expected to "succeed." It's worth saying that standing with Black folks — saying that we matter, acknowledging that we've endured more pain than we can bear — might rob you of your ability to become anything you want to be, too. This is what happened to three white protesters — Joseph Rosenbaum, Anthony Huber, and Gaige Grosskreutz — who were shot while standing against police brutality in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in August. Two of them died. A 17-year-old white kid named Kyle Rittenhouse has been charged with their murder.

    I still believe that if I live long enough, the adage my mother and father, my teachers and pastors, Big Bird and Elmo, and every other inspirational character seeded in my young mind, could, in fact, come true. But no matter how much I may accomplish, killing after killing after killing reminds me that I cannot become enough of a person to retain the ability to choose freely to live. Because, for Black people in America, the favorable promise of becoming anything is outweighed by the reality of having nothing.

                                            

     FROM THE CENTER

    Louisville and beyond: Calls for reform on ‘no-knock’ police raids

    Christian Science Monitor 





    Ryan Frederick wakes up to furious barking from his dogs and the booming sound of splintered wood, like a broken tree. It’s night; he doesn’t know what time. All he knows is that he lives in a rough neighborhood in Chesapeake, Virginia, and that his house was broken into just days ago.

    Mr. Frederick gets up, and before stepping gently into the hall, grabs his handgun. He isn’t a great shot. He doesn’t even exactly know what his gun is called. But he keeps it for home defense, like his grandfather always told him to.

    The booming continues as he turns toward his front door. It’s broken. From the light of a small lamp he can see bluejeans and a quicksilver jacket, someone halfway in and reaching for the deadbolt.


    “I’m on adrenaline,” remembers Mr. Frederick, “not really thinking, just kind of reacting.”

    He clicks the safety, and he fires.

    Less than half an hour later, he lies face-down outside, handcuffed, and surrounded by squad cars.

    “Do you know what you just did?” an officer asks. 

    “Not exactly,” says Mr. Frederick.

    “You just killed a police officer.”

    Suddenly nauseous, Mr. Frederick learns that his house had been the target of a police raid. The officers went in that summer night in 2009 looking for a drug-dealing operation. They found only a small amount of marijuana, and that their intelligence had been incorrect. In the process, a detective lost his life, and Mr. Frederick lost almost 10 years of his to prison for involuntary manslaughter. All the result of one bad tip, one poorly aimed bullet, and a court sentence that many of Mr. Frederick’s neighbors thought was unjust. 

    “I still didn’t feel like it was real,” he remembers. “I was like, this can’t be happening. There is no way that I just shot a police officer. Police officers don’t come breaking in through a hole in your door.”

    In fact, police officers sometimes do, executing legal but risky “no-knock” or “knock-and-announce” warrants. While there’s no clear data, American police carry out 40,000 to 50,000 no-knock raids each year by some estimates. As the Breonna Taylor case in Louisville shows, they can lead to the wrenching outcome in which both sides use force legally, and someone still dies.

    These confrontations are rare, but in a country with expansive gun rights and police authority they occur each year. In their wake, they leave tragedies without clear heroes or villains – and the trauma caused by a real-time clash over Second and Fourth Amendment rights.

    In the reckoning over invasive policing, in part caused by Ms. Taylor’s death, law enforcement and legislatures nationwide are now wondering whether gun rights can safely coexist with no-knock raids.

    “If [police are] going in for something that’s not a life-or-death matter, then you really have to weigh out the pros and cons,” says Mr. Frederick. “How dangerous is this? Is the risk worth the reward?”

    The rise of no-knock raids

    The answer to that question from police departments has long been yes, says Radley Balko, author of “Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America’s Police Forces.” 

    No-knock warrants first became legal during the war on drugs around 50 years ago. At that time, they were primarily used to catch violent criminals by surprise, and prevent an armed conflict before it could begin. In the years since, says Mr. Balko, the warrants have become less exclusive and are often used against low-level offenders or those with clean records – like Mr. Frederick.

    Such a wide net can at times entrap innocent civilians in invasive raids, either from misinformation or poor intelligence. In essence, this is what happened to Ms. Taylor.

    Police entered her home this March without announcing their presence, according to most witnesses. Fearing the worst, Ms. Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, opened fire, and police fired back. Ms. Taylor was killed, but no one was charged for her death in the grand jury’s rulings last week – though one officer was indicted with wanton endangerment for hitting the walls of neighboring apartments. The city of Louisville has agreed to a $12 million settlement with Ms. Taylor's family and promised to institute reforms.




    To many members of the public – and to the grand jury, which dropped the initial charges against him – Mr. Walker acted in reasonable self-defense.

    “I think he did what a lot of people would have done,” says Dana McMahan, a Louisville resident.

    There are legal barriers intended to prevent this kind of confrontation. When police apply for a search warrant, they must present probable cause to a magistrate or judge. To protect one’s right to privacy, regular search warrants require that police knock on the door and announce themselves before entering. In cases with potential for danger or the destruction of evidence, police can request no-knock permission. 

    But even without that permission, police can disregard the knock-and-announce rule if circumstances change during a raid. There’s also lowered incentive to follow protocol in the first place, since the Supreme Court ruled in Hudson v. Michigan in 2006 that evidence acquired in a botched raid is still admissible in court.

    Guns in homes

    As police have gained authority to enter private homes, civilians have invested more in home protection.

    In the last 30 years, largely due to marketing from the firearm industry, the primary reason for gun ownership has changed from sport to self-defense, says Daniel Webster, director of the Center for Gun Policy and Research at Johns Hopkins University. 

    Where the culture has moved, the law has followed. In 2008’s District of Columbia v. Heller, the Supreme Court affirmed the right of law-abiding citizens to keep a firearm in the house for the purposes of protection.



    The ruling complements self-defense laws across the country, which allow citizens to use proportional force to protect themselves against violent crime, says Russell Covey, a professor of criminal law at Georgia State University. 

    In public, most states require citizens to retreat from violent confrontations if possible – though not in states with “stand your ground” laws. At home, says Professor Covey, citizens are exempt from that rule under a provision known as the castle doctrine. 

    An unstable situation

    his combination of more invasive police and more armed civilians has created a kind of crisis instability, with potential for small mistakes to be fatal.

    “Once we’re at the point where the police are breaking down the door and you have an armed person inside that doesn’t know or can be reasonably mistaken about whether, in fact, it’s the police ...  it’s too late,” says Darrell Miller, the Melvin G. Shimm professor of law at Duke University and author of “The Positive Second Amendment: Rights, Regulation, and the Future of Heller.”

    It may seem like a legal paradox, says Professor Covey, but under the law it’s possible for both sides to reasonably believe they need to use force – especially during adrenaline-filled raids. Fight-or-flight responses can be especially dangerous when perceptions of threat are skewed by race, as they often seem to be when African Americans are involved, says Professor Miller. 

    “Either with a knock or without a knock [conducting a raid is] scary as hell,” says David Thomas, a former SWAT team officer and professor of forensic studies at Florida Gulf Coast University.

    Even with intelligence, police never know exactly what’s on the other side of the door, and they have to enter with the idea that their target could be deadly, he says. They’re prepared to lose their life, says Mr. Thomas, even if by accident.

    “It’s just a hazard of the job,” he says.

    Anguish in Louisville 

    But it’s another thing for civilians, who don’t volunteer for the dangers of police work, to accept those costs.

    “If the cops did a no-knock warrant on me – I have a mom, a dad, sisters, and brothers I have to look out for. So I’m going to fire,” says Shyler Andis, a Louisville resident whose sibling was killed by police. “I have a right to fire my weapon if I feel threatened or somebody barges in my house.”

    Ms. Andis and many others marched through the city last week to protest the grand jury’s rulings. Following the outcry this summer over Ms. Taylor’s death, Louisville and other cities across the country banned no-knock warrants – though many don’t think that is enough.

    “They can just force themselves into our homes, unannounced. It’s scary,” says DaPree Oldham, another Louisville resident. “There’s got to be a different approach.”

    In such an environment of grievance and legal contradiction, the only way out is reform, says Eugene O’Donnell, a former NYPD officer and professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. 

    If legislatures don’t think no-knock warrants are appropriate, he says, they should ban them. The same goes for other police practices.

    But maintaining the status quo, says Mr. Balko, the author on police militarization, can make certain lives seem disposable. 

    “If you conducted this raid and an innocent person died and the police were following policy and there’s nothing wrong with the policy and you’re not going to change the policy, then the only conclusion that we can draw from that is that innocent people dying is a perfectly acceptable outcome,” he says.

    “I’d be in a totally different place”

    For Mr. Frederick, the death of the detective that night 11 years ago has never been acceptable. (His case at the time drew widespread support from neighbors, who gathered on social media and left a “we support you, Ryan Frederick” sign on his yard, signed by dozens.)

    Yet no matter the circumstances, he still killed a father, husband, and family member. After all, the officer was just doing his job.

    Like Mr. Walker, Mr. Frederick says he didn’t know it was police breaking through his door. Unlike Mr. Walker, his shot was fatal.

    After spending some time in Florida, he now works as a plumber outside Richmond, Virginia. He’s followed the Breonna Taylor case with interest, hoping it brings a change in police culture and accountability. Still, he says, it brings back bad memories.

    Several times, Mr. Frederick’s considered reaching out to the detective’s family. Every time, he’s felt too nervous or too scared.

    “I worry that would just stir up a negative reaction that doesn’t need to be,” he says.

    But if they ever reached out, he thinks he’d be willing to talk. Maybe his time in prison gave them some closure. Maybe they, like him, have found a way to make peace with it all.

    “Knowing what I know now, I wish I didn’t have the gun at all because I wouldn’t have had that option and that guy would be alive and I’d be in a totally different place in life,” he says.

    From the right

    Face facts: ‘Black Lives Matter’ is all about hate

    From the New York Post




    Its agenda is plain for all to see: cop-killing

    With another two police officers shot at the Black Lives Matter riot in Louisville on Wednesday, it’s time to lift the veil on the whole movement: It’s a haven for unrepentant cop-killers.

    These aren’t isolated incidents. It has been fewer than two weeks since supposedly “peaceful” BLM radicals chanted, “We hope they die,” while blocking the entrance to a hospital where two Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies were undergoing life-saving surgery. An assailant had walked up to their patrol vehicle and opened fire from point-blank range without provocation.

    Those chilling words echo the rhetoric we hear from BLM founders and members, who make clear that a prime objective of BLM is to “Kill Cops.” Up until now, this has been kept well enough under wraps to ­deceive major corporations, professional sports leagues and countless well-meaning Americans.

    Joe Biden has made propagating this movement’s lies a centerpiece of his presidential campaign, waiting months before condemning the wanton ­violence perpetrated by BLM. Staff members on the Biden campaign contributed money to secure the release of rioters charged with crimes. Meanwhile, progressive Democratic prosecutors refused to even charge some of the worst rioters.

    Some people try to separate BLM “the organization” from “the movement” that goes by the same name, but at most they are two sides of the same coin. From the start, both the organization and the movement — BLM writ large — have been about hatred and violence that extends beyond police and includes all white people, all blacks who are conservative and the United States of America.

    We saw this in 2014, when BLM first attained national prominence. After months of ­anti-police rioting, a man pledging “revenge for Michael Brown and Eric Garner” traveled to New York City, stuck a pistol through the window of a squad car and opened fire. Detectives Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu died on the scene.

    I mourned the officers like the rest of New York did. And when I met with the Ramos and Liu families, I was aghast. I reiterated my call for politicians to abandon their reckless anti-police rhetoric. “Maybe,” I suggested, “they should spend the next four months not talking about police hatred, but talking about what they are going to do about bringing down crime in the community.”

    Nineteen months later, a man opened fire at a BLM protest in Dallas, murdering five officers. BLM disavowed responsibility, but the killer had deep links to the movement’s radical ideology, stating that he “wanted to kill white people, especially white officers.” BLM supporters certainly didn’t stop chanting “Pigs in a blanket, fry ’em like bacon” in the aftermath, either.

    BLM counts on a legion of journalists who believe BLM will help advance a “progressive” agenda. They will never admit that violence against ­police isn’t an unfortunate outgrowth of the BLM movement — but the central point.

    Black Lives Matter isn’t about black lives. It ignores the 8,000 to 9,000 black lives taken by other blacks every year in minority communities across the nation. Those black lives, and the lives of African American police officers, don’t matter.

    Black Lives Matter isn’t about “holding police accountable,” and it isn’t a good-faith call for reasonable reform.

    If we had a functioning mainstream media, this would be common knowledge by now. ­Instead, people are learning the real nature of BLM by watching protesters scream “We hope they die” outside a hospital where two cops are fighting for their lives.

    The time has come to face the facts. If you ever supported Black Lives Matter, then you are either a left-wing radical — or you got duped. There is no shame in the latter. By design, the relentlessly repeated cry of “Black lives matter” is an unassailable moral truism, calculated to bully people into supporting a radical, revolutionary, anti-order movement.

    The good news is that it isn’t too late to make the right decision. You can be a good person who decries racism and condemns police misconduct yet still reject violent left-wing radicalism unequivocally. You can stand for the safety and human dignity of black people — and of all people — and simultaneously stand with the police officers who maintain law and order.

    It starts with rejecting BLM and every politician who has been cynical enough to enable the radical forces intent on tearing this country apart. When you see Black Lives Matter, realize they are dedicated to killing cops. Too much blood has been spilled already. It has to stop.

    Rudolph Giuliani is the former mayor of New York City.

     

     

  •  FROM THE CENTER