Thus, I was surprised to later (maybe hours, maybe a day) to find a response from my friend who said that the articles that came up supported his position, not mine. I was baffled. I knew my friend was quite intelligent and could at least read. I typed in my search again and the same articles came up, so I sent him the links to my articles and asked how they could possibly be interpreted to side with him. He replied that they were not the articles that he saw and then sent me those--which were articles with considerably different slants. Incredulous, I assumed that he had typed in the wrong term and accused him of such, but he insisted that he typed in precisely what I had asked him.
It was the first time that I realized that Google (and other search engines) tailor the information that is received when someone types in a search. I had naively believed that Google's search engine was based on an international (or at least national) average of usage and reliability of the information--perhaps based on the number of "hits" that a site had if a particular term was searched. I knew that companies employed people to click on their product throughout the day and from changing IP addresses as a way to artificially raise their sites for certain searches, but I did not realize that the algorithm specifically chose sites that "I" was more likely to click.
As humans, we are already prone to confirmation bias--we will tend to agree with information that supports what we already agree. It is a little terrifying to realize that this bias is enforced by our own usage of the Internet due to a blind algorithm that is simply trying to generate as many hits as possible for its advertisers. This is why so many people say things like "you clearly haven't researched this." For them, the information that they wanted came on top--how could anyone possibly miss it?
This means that we, a species who tend to only believe what we want in the first place, are being fed almost exclusively only information that confirms what we believe in our daily attempts to inform ourselves. It's no wonder that we see specific events from around the world in such starkly different ways. Considering that falsehoods are intentionally added to the system that has limited means of filtering it, it makes sense that people could thus be so easily misled.
When people ask why I continue to read, listen, watch, or engage with some of the rubbish being spewed by extremist media (and there's still plenty that I avoid), I answer that I want to know what sort of information might be getting fed to my friends, family, community members, and students so that I have a better understanding of where their ideas are coming from.