Internet personalization fragments common knowledge into a billion oppositional realities

Evidence

Morozov also predicted that the internet would destroy common knowledge—the shared understanding that citizens not only have the same information but know that others have it too. This dissolution went beyond lifestyle fragmentation to create entirely oppositional realities. Pundits warned that social media, particularly Facebook, placed users in ideological bubbles. As Morozov put it, “The logical end of this ever-increasing personalisation is of each user having his or her own online experience…. Instead of the internet, we may as well start talking of a billion ‘internets’—one for each user.” This splintering left the liberal professional classes unaware of shifts in public opinion that enabled Brexit and Trump’s election. — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 492

Categorization

• XREF: Directly feeds the reader’s project of reconstructing Marx’s historical periodization — the erosion of subcultural difference / shared knowledge collapse. Also connects to the concept of common knowledge as an epistemic precondition for collective action. — connects to: Algorithmic personalization erodes the shared public space that allows surprise — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1287; Algorithmic feeds convert the open Internet into personalized echo chambers — Lee McIntyre, Post-Truth, 192
• SEED: Angle: was Morozov’s ‘billion internets’ prophecy the same diagnosis as omnivore monoculture’s flattening — fragmentation versus homogenization as rival accounts of why the era lacks identity?