Implicit Judgment Delegation Without Governance: A Theory of Information Cocoons

Information cocoons and systematic bias persist in modern information systems despite continuous improvements in personalization algorithms and content diversity. Existing explanations typically attribute these phenomena to filtering mechanisms, engagement optimization, or user cognitive bias. While these accounts capture important contributing factors, they do not fully explain why informational narrowing remains durable even as technical interventions improve. This paper argues that information cocoons arise not primarily from personalization itself, but from the implicit and ungoverned delegation of human judgment to autonomous systems. Users rationally delegate judgment to platforms to reduce cognitive load and improve short-term relevance, while platforms benefit from persistent delegation through scalable optimization and stable system behavior. Over time, however, judgment authority inferred from behavior—rather than explicitly negotiated—can persist without sufficient visibility, reversibility, or accountability. As a result, delegated judgment accumulates into structural interpretive authority that shapes users’ information environments in ways that are difficult to inspect or contest. We introduce a conceptual framework that treats judgment as a delegable and governable resource, distinguishes delegation strength from delegation governance, and explains why strong delegation can remain beneficial when governed, while even weak delegation can become harmful when governance is absent. Using social media as a canonical case, we show how rational short-term delegation choices can lead to long-term informational narrowing through ungoverned persistence. We further propose responsible autonomy as a stewardship model under which platforms function as custodians—rather than owners—of delegated judgment authority. By reframing information cocoons as failures of judgment governance rather than failures of personalization accuracy, this work provides a unifying explanation for their persistence and outlines design and organizational implications for governing delegated judgment in information systems at scale.