The forum: a filter bubble, an echo chamber or something else?

Dear pcm,

I agree with you, especially for an ethical company and its community forum. Officially, publicly and in theory, the Fairphone company seems to agree too:
“You’ve supported us at the same time you’ve kept us sharp and kept pushing us harder” (Fairphone company blog post “Launching Fairphone 3: Dare to care” of the 27 august 2019)
Link: Launching Fairphone 3: Dare to care - Fairphone

But in practice, they seem to struggle on points they haven’t chosen to focus on:

Is that the case more on company hosted community forums than on third-party independent community forums ? Or is it pretty much the same ?

I have been a member of this forum only for a short time. I wouldn’t go as far as “blind faith”. In my experience, the problem is rather a strong bias which tends to make some members forget certain basic rules of fact-finding and logic. It leads to the popular use of some formal or informal fallacy, for example:

  • “straw man” technique
  • illusory truth effect
  • sophism

But the result is pretty much same: the drowning of any fact and/or opinion that is too different or too critical.

OK. Well, for now, I tend more toward the “echo chamber” effect for this forum because of the lack of algorithms (in the narrow sense). But to be honest, I have merely begun to read material on these subjects.

Do you have any knowledge or tips on these notions (reinforcement bubble, filter bubble, echo chamber, communal reinforcement, etc) ?

Best regards,

Swiss-fairphone