The Filter Bubble – It was a term coined by Eli Pariser, a well-known internet activist, to describe the result of the personalization of the World Wide Web. In his book, “The Filter Bubble: What the Internet is Hiding from You,” he explains this phenomena. He describes the filter bubble as the “personal universe of information that you’ll live in online — unique and constructed just for you by the array of personalized filters that now power the web.” This personal universe will depend on who the user is, what he does and what his preferences are. The filter bubble acts as a curator of information. With the use of algorithms, searches are filtered to direct to us information that the bubble deems most relevant to our interest.
Eli discovered the Bubble, when he stumbled upon a Google blog, boasting that Google searches are personalized for everyone. The idea piqued his interest, and so he made an experiment. He had two of his friends, Scott and Daniel, Google the exact same keyword (Egypt) and compared the results.
The results are shown below:
As you can see, the results of the query for the 2 are
different
Scott’s search results show the ff:
|
Daniel’s search:
|
|
|
The information showed to people is indeed personalized. It
is tailor made to suit one’s preference and tastes, and these preferences show
in our online activity: what content we choose to view, what content we choose
to post and share. In fact, Google tracks 57 different signals about each user
to determine these points.
This is not only done by Google. Nearly every major website,
in one way or another, makes of this bubble. Facebook updates our newsfeed with
information that it thinks is relevant to our interest, pushing what we find
interesting at the top. Amazon gives us a catalog of products we are more
likely to buy, based on what we bought before. Yahoo News gives us articles
that we are interested in based on our searches. Big companies all over the
world are moving towards this “web personalization” in order to provide people
with information that is more relevant to them.
This is done to make things more efficient for us. But what
are its implications? Eli discussed 3 problems that resulted from the implementation
of the Filter Bubble.
"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
First, we have the Distortion Problem. Because the bubble
filters the information that we are exposed to online, we may have a distorted
image of reality. Our views are constantly reinforced by the bubble, giving us
content that we agree with, while removing those that we disagree with. This
may keep us from being exposed to new ideas and opposing views.
"A squirrel dying in front of your house may be more
relevant to your interests right now than people dying in Africa." - Mark
Zucekrberg, Facebook
Second, we are experiencing the psychological equivalent of
obesity. The Filter Bubble may result to us viewing only entertaining content
(e.g. cat videos), while filtering out unpleasant, yet necessary information,
such as news about the world: wars, economic turmoil, etc. It has been said that
great media sources gives us a balance between relevant and entertaining, the
same way that a balanced diet consist of carbs, proteins and fiber. The Filter
Bubble may upset that balance by taking away much of the fiber, and overloading
the plate with much preferred carbs.
"Learning is by definition an encounter with what you
don't know..." Siva Vaidhyanathan
Third, we have a lack of control over the content that we
are exposed to. The algorithmic filtering is invisible to us, and thus we have no
idea what gets filtered out. If the Filter Bubble gives us information related
to what we normally consume, how will we encounter those that we may want/need,
but have no idea that they exist?
We have to make sure that these algorithms, if they are
tasked to curate the world of information for our benefit, are not only keyed to relevance, that we may
be exposed to information that is important, uncomfortable, challenging and
opposing to our current views. This is done for our benefit. We cannot have a
functioning democracy without a good flow of information.
“We really need the internet to be that thing, that we all
dreamed of it being. We need it to connect us all together. We need it to
introduce us to new ideas, new people and different perspectives. And it's not
gonna do that if it leaves us all isolated in a web of one.” - Eli Pariser
References:
Pariser, Eli. The
Filter Bubble: How the New Personalized Web Is Changing What We Read and How We
Think. United Kingdom: Penguin Books
TED Talks: Eli Pariser – Beware of Online Filter Bubbles, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8ofWFx525s.
March 3, 2014
Walang komento:
Mag-post ng isang Komento