The KIND Foundation created Pop Your Bubble, a first-of-its-kind social experiment, featuring a tool to help people triumph over technology. The secret was our “anti-algorithm” — an algorithm that matched users with people who were most different from them (rather than just showing them more of what they already “like”).

We didn’t just talk about our divided nation — we offered a concrete solution to help people actually listen to one another. The tool was the centerpiece of our experiment, giving anyone access to a personalized array of strangers who would “pop their bubble.” To find these strangers, we analyzed a user’s Facebook profile (age, location, likes, shares, etc.) and discovered people that were the most different from them. Once a user followed ten of those strangers, they could pop their bubble, and share on social media, which was now populated with perspectives from outside their world view.

Pop Your Bubble was a social experiment conducted in multiple parts.

First we exposed the problem, showing ten participants the surprisingly skewed makeup of their political bubbles. We then challenged our participants to pop their social media bubbles, documenting their reactions in a film.

Next we built a Facebook tool and a custom “anti-algorithm,” giving the whole nation a chance to fix their news feeds. The tool analyzed users’ Facebook profiles (age, location, likes, shares, etc.) to find strangers that were the most different from them, and made it easy to follow any of them on Facebook with a single tap. Once users followed ten of those strangers, they could “pop their bubble” and share the news with their friends. After popping, the user’s Facebook feeds would be populated with thoughts, opinions, and daily life updates dramatically different than the ones they were used to seeing.

In the first two weeks, Pop Your Bubble resulted in more than 140 million earned media impressions, including coverage from The Washington Post, Fast Company, CNN, and more, as well as 25 million Twitter impressions. Most importantly, within the same time period, users established over 40,000 new relationships, furthering the KIND Foundation’s mission to connect people from all walks of life.