Concepts such as ‘filter bubble’ enjoy considerable popularity in scholarly as well as mainstream debates, but are rarely defined with any rigour. This has led to highly contradictory research findings. This article provides a critical review of the ‘filter bubble’ idea, and concludes that its persistence has served only to distract scholarly attention from far more critical areas of enquiry.
Does competiton law apply to search engines and social networks? The paper maintains that existing competition concepts are flexible enough to be adequately applied to these internet services.