BubbleSort: An app to help us break our own bubbles

Building this app will help you measure your bubble and act on it.

Note: I originally wrote this as a private Google doc to share with friends about 18 months ago just as an idea. Finally getting around to making it public

We all live in our own bubbles.

35% of [American] online news consumers say the news they get from their friends and family online is one-sided; 31% say that it represents more than one side.

(source: Journalism.org)

No matter what our political, social, economic, spiritual, or religious views might be:

1. When we are in our own bubbles, it’s very hard for the best of us to see that. Most people who are in a bubble don’t think that they are. And this could easily be you and me.
2. We want to be exposed to viewpoints that differ from our own.
3. We learn from people that we disagree with. Even if we think we’re in the right. Even if we don’t like them.

A big (but not the only) source of our individual bubbles today is social media. Let me be more specific. It’s Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. And for a much smaller population, services like Medium.

BubbleSort is an app that helps you

1. Figure out if you are in a social media bubble.
2. Measure and quantify your bubble by demographics.
   e.g you might not be in a “silicon valley” bubble but you might be in a “liberal” bubble.
   e.g you think you’re not in a bubble because you silently disagree with your friends. But you still might be in an “AI” bubble since you all share the same opinions around robots replacing humans in jobs.
3. Give actionable insights so you can take action to burst your own bubble.

How it works

1. You give BubbleSort access to your social media presence on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn.
2. BubbleSort analyzes the demographics by the geography, sentiment, etc. in content and news that you are exposed to through social media.
3. BubbleSort gives you the anonymized analysis results of your bubble — by both demographics as well as sentiment.
4. BubbleSort identifies the complement of these demographics, and suggests some news outlets and people for you to follow to break your bubble.
5. You can come back to BubbleSort every once in a while to see how your bubble is evolving over time — that way you’ll always know where you stand.

I’m making the BubbleSort idea open for anyone who wants to build it.

Of course, I wouldn’t want to build something that no one wants. I do that too much already in my startup tech bubble.

So if you want to see this become a reality, ❤ it. Here’s what I’ll commit

250 👏🏾’s, We’ll make designs and open source them.

1000 👏🏾’s, We’ll find a way to finance and make an open source v1.0 of this app a reality.

If you have ideas about how to make BubbleSort even better, if you’d like to work with me directly to build it, or if you’ve seen something else that already exists that would do this, please write a response or let me know by emailing me at vinayak at drafted.us.

Thanks to Mario Bollini.