The Filter Bubble

Great interview on Radio NZ this morning, with Eli Pariser author of ‘The Filter Bubble: What the Internet is Hiding from You’.

Content as well as advertising is now targeted to users. So internet users receive information that reflect their own opinions and interests and as Pariser comments “we don’t see how our experience of the web is different from anyone else’s”. By making our searches personally relevant and individually likeable (“if you like this fact you’ll like that fact”) we don’t get exposed to different perspectives. And we have not had the opportunity to ‘opt out’ of this search personalisation.

Online personalisation started for Google Dec 4 2009. Evidently 57 data points are used including such variables as your past searches, technology and font you use, where you are located, your speed of clicking through. Pariser says, “the watch word in Silicon Valley these days is relevant”.

Mark Zuckerburg of Facebook has been quoted “a squirrel dying in your front yard may be more relevant to you right now than people dying in Africa.” Pariser comments, “I worry about what a web and what a news ecosystem that is built on that idea of relevance might look like”. Presentation by Pariser on this is also here.

The discussion on the benefit of the editorial role in main stream media with the premise of the civic responsibility and ethics, compared to the algorithmic feed of personalised news on the web is interesting food for thought given the current News of the World story.