The Filter Bubble

Notes on Eli Pariser: Beware online “filter bubbles”

 

• An invisible Shift in information flow
• News feed- “A squirrel dying in front of your house may be more relevant to your interests right now than people dying in Africa.”- Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook
• A web based on this relevance goes against an internet that is supposed to connect the individual to the world.
•  Invisible algorithmic editing of the web
• 57 signals that Google looks at including where you are and what server browser you are using
• The results are based on what the search engine assumes you want to see.
•  Yahoo News, New York Times, Huffington Post and Washington Post
• Not necessarily what we need to see. “It will be very hard for people to watch or consume something that has not in some sense been tailored for them.” Eric Schmidt- Google
• All of these filters and algorithms are a filter bubble
• Your filter bubble is based on who you are and what you do except you do not get to decide what gets filtered on or more importantly edited out
• Ethic struggle in our Netflix views (dessert vs. vegetables)

My Filter Bubble

 

Using Google+ made me realize how little the internet actually knows about my personality. After creating an account, Google+ subscribed me to “communities,” which are topics to follow. The topics that Google+ immediately subscribed to were Music, Photography, and News. The feed that I observed included anything from Katy Perry to CNN en espanol. The algorithms, as Pariser would say, assumed that I first, speak Spanish, and worse, listen to Katy Perry. Whether or not, Mary Kate Olsen’s work-out attire is fashionable is beyond my personal interests. Another example of my filter bubble took place as I searched Google+ for the community “digital photography.” This feed is something I am interested in viewing; however it is the only feed that appears under my communities. This is a problem because I am not being exposed to any other type of photography.

 

A Filter Bubble in Action

 

I conducted an experiment with the images shown below based on a simple Google search, similar to Pariser in his lecture. I searched the word “Plant” and before I pressed the button “search” Google provided me with a list of phrases that included “plant” assuming what I wanted to search. My personal, or not so personal, search appears as the first image on the top. My friend, Sharon Roll, had a similar experience but different phrases popped up.  The phrases that were suggested to me were plants, plants vs. zombies, and plants vs. zombies 2. Sharon’s suggested search phrases were plantar fasciitis treatment ankle pain, plantar fasciitis, and plants vs. zombies. Given my friend Sharon’s  history with ankle pain, it is clear that Google was attempting to convenience Sharon’s search by linking it to her search history.

My Search

Sharon's Search