Presence in the unknown

Internet and social media oscillate between filter bubbles and diversity. Contrary to popular belief, certain platforms like TikTok foster serendipity through their algorithms, which test each piece of content with a variety of users, thereby addressing the fundamental human need for discovery and otherness.

From the Arab Spring to Covid
Filter bubbles are frequently discussed in relation to social media and the internet, as they are said to produce a homogenization of thought, for which the networks and their capitalist agents are held responsible, leading to major political failures. In reality, this perception of the internet varies over time and depending on who is expressing it.

For example, the Arab Spring (late 2010 and 2011), which was seen by the West as a salutary movement of revolt for global democracy (though this has not entirely held true over time), was at the time credited to social media, which allowed people to connect and network freely. Back then, Facebook was seen as a tool beneficial to the development of democracy.

On the other hand, social media has also been heavily accused of influencing elections through large-scale manipulations linked to filter bubbles, aimed at further convincing the already convinced and preventing them from perceiving the diversity of the world. One can recall the Cambridge Analytica scandal, revealed in 2016.

Similarly, during the two-year Covid crisis (2020-2021), for instance, the censorship of any information questioning Western health policies was rigorously enforced by major social media platforms. The big players of the internet contributed to the homogenization of thought, fueling what could be described as a totalitarian moment in Western societies, where the vast majority of citizens thought exactly the same way. This monolithic thinking was justified by the virtuous goal of “defending health,” which was achieved by fully and publicly discrediting any dissenting thought. This undemocratic moment was justified by a health necessity whose scale and means of action were off-limits for discussion (a point well documented by philosopher Michel Foucault with the concept of biopower in the 1970s).

At the time, for those who were looking at things differently, and in hindsight, it gradually became clear that this scale had largely been fabricated in people’s imaginations. Current comparisons of the effectiveness of lockdown policies prove this well. I refer to the excellent investigation on lockdowns in Le Monde Diplomatique from March 2025. This investigation shows that France’s security-focused policy, one of the strictest in the world, did not produce greater health security for the population. On the contrary, comparisons with territories of similar characteristics, such as Germany, Denmark, or Japan, show that the protection of populations against the virus was far weaker in France. And yet, during this same period, certain social media platforms allowed diverse viewpoints to exist, such as TikTok or Telegram. On these platforms, and especially on TikTok, whose success is absolutely phenomenal and whose logic is now being copied by other social media, we receive diverse information beyond our preexisting preferences.

The Invention of Hypertext

The invention of the World Wide Web (one of the uses of the internet), web browsing via web browsers, was created in 1989 by Tim Berners-Lee. He invented HTML, a markup language used in a special software, the web browser, which has the unique feature—completely different from books—of containing internal links within pages, clickable to lead to other pages. This seems obvious to us today. The very name of the language, HTML, stands for Hypertext Markup Language. It is text within which one can click, leading to other texts where one can click again, and so on. This is what is called transversal navigation, something we do all the time on the internet, inherently since its invention.

The web is a technology that allows extremely free movement from within one text to within another. One might argue that we only navigate between texts of the same perspective. But in the book Incognita Incognita, or the Pleasure of Finding What You Weren’t Looking For by Marc Forstyh (2014, published in France in 2019 by Éditions du Sonneur), he says that machines do what we tell them to do and that we only get what we already knew. For example, you search for a topic and land on a Wikipedia page.

Sorry, Marc, but precisely on the Wikipedia page, I will delve deeper into a topic. One might object that I was looking for that topic, so I won’t discover something by chance, through serendipity. But precisely yes, because the Wikipedia page is full of links to related topics that, if followed, allow me to navigate through extremely diverse thoughts.

And we’ve known since Steve Krug’s book Don’t Make Me Think in 2006 that when browsing a web page, people don’t click on links rationally but intuitively. So precisely, our attitude is to go toward what speaks to us, without rationalism. When creating websites that are meant to be very rational and well-organized, we notice that people don’t explore them much. People browse websites transversally. Thus, in the way we navigate the web, we are at the very heart of serendipity.

Of course, some social media platforms like Facebook, for example, during Covid, deliberately hid certain information from us, so there were things we couldn’t discover. But we might stumble upon other social media platforms that open us up to different perspectives, and this can even happen from Facebook, which can link to TikTok or Telegram.

The TikTok Algorithm

The TikTok algorithm is extremely original compared to the algorithms of other social media platforms in that every new piece of content posted on the platform is systematically tested with 100 to 200 users. Then, depending on the audience’s engagement—whether they watch the video to the end, share it with others, or comment on it—it will be proposed to more users, and its reach will expand gradually. As a result, on TikTok, it is entirely possible, though rare, for the first video you post to be seen by 10 million people. This simply doesn’t exist on other social media platforms, at least not initially, because on other platforms, content is primarily prioritized based on who you follow. This is less true now, as TikTok’s success has led other platforms to copy its model.

This serendipity built into TikTok’s algorithm is what makes it so appealing to its users. It’s precisely why people love TikTok so much—it offers diversity in their universe. Of course, they mainly see things that resonate with them, that they enjoy, and that they’ve chosen to see, and there’s nothing wrong with that. We have the right to have preferences and cultivate them, and these tools cater to that. But these tests of each new video with 100 or 200 users are conducted across all users, not just a supposedly representative panel. It’s you and I who, while browsing TikTok, are offered completely new content, completely foreign to our expectations and preferences, and we can immediately decide whether we’re not interested or whether we’ll benefit from it, discovering and opening ourselves to new things.

The great economic intelligence of this model is that they know very well that for something to interest people, it must enrich them. And enrichment lies in diversity. People are not stupid. Some social media platforms may indeed try to make people stupid, but what will endure is the space for diversity, critical thinking, and the place for one’s own consciousness and singular thought. And this is defined at the heart of diversity. Humans need others; they need to be enriched through encounters with otherness.

The Intrinsic Curiosity of the Child

Of course, this is not always at work in life, particularly in educational systems, but it is within us. A child, for example, is absolutely and unconditionally curious about everything. And through this curiosity, they will define their unique preferences. But if given the opportunity to cultivate it, they will never give up the pleasure of discovering something new.

I don’t believe that digital spaces for human interaction are less diverse than physical spaces. If you live in a neighborhood, say a suburb of Le Havre, you might never have gone to the sea even though you’re just 3 km away.

So this culture of discovery, which is intrinsic to humans, is not at all shaped by digital interactions. However, this culture of diversity deserves to be nurtured and cultivated—never forced—in both physical and digital spaces. The challenge is to create connections. That is, this encounter with diversity must be embodied in a link with who I am. For example, on TikTok, I am in my own space, and within this reassuring space, diverse things are offered to me, alongside the more familiar things I see. We must be careful, for instance, when in “the neighborhoods,” we try to bring “good culture,” which presents itself in a condescending manner and, rightly so, can be rejected by people who don’t want to feel humiliated by what is offered to them, presented as superior to what they love and know.