#the filter bubble

[kxowledge]

Your Google search results, your Facebook news feed, your daily news are becoming tailored specifically to you through the magic of advanced technology. The result is an increasingly homogenised view of the world delivered to you in such fashion that you are only able to consume what you already agree with.

The Filter Bubble, Eli Pariser

[sensemakingmachine]

“So it goes with the fiction we read, the movies we watch, the music we listen to and, scarily, the ideas we subscribe to. They’re not challenged. They’re validated and reinforced. By bookmarking given blogs and personalizing social-media feeds, we customize the news we consume and the political beliefs we’re exposed to as never before. And this colors our days, or rather bleeds them of color, reducing them to a single hue.“

How Facebook Warps Our Worlds - The New York Times

[colleenmclellan]

Don't Bother Reading What You're Retweeting

Discussing the latest tweak to a social networking service's algorithm last night—yes, my life is exactly as sad and empty as even a cursory examination of my work would reveal—I compared Facebook to the coffee table ...

Or Tumbling, as it were! 

In my work as Events Coordinator for an excellent non-profit, my computer screen is framed by the blue banner of Facebook for almost every working hour. Unfortunately, this is not because I’m scrolling through pictures of my friends’ travels, pets, and children.* It’s because I follow organizations in the social sector that put up relevant, important news that might affect how we do our jobs.

For instance: Women with a Vision, an incredible New Orleans non-profit, posted this essay today about Jane Jacobs’ urban design theories, and gentrification.

But when we celebrate Jacobs today, we don’t celebrate the shortcomings of the urbanism she espoused, because if we did we’d realize how much work there is to accomplish before urban planning can really address her biggest goals. As University of Michigan urban planning professor June Manning Thomas points out, the field now barely attempts to improve the lives of poorer urban communities, instead focusing on visual improvements to already-exclusive spaces like downtown cores. “What we see as ‘normal’ is really the end result of cumulative privilege we’ve been building in this country for middle class whites since the 1920s and 1930s,” Manning Thomas said last year. “We’ve essentially cut ourselves off from seeing the injustice.”

This excerpt is framed by praise of Jacobs’ pioneering work. Of course, you might not know that if you didn’t read the article. And you might not see the innovative ways in which the writer, Peter Moskowitz, frames urban design and economic stratification. You could probably start a cocktail party conversation! But I’m not convinced you could keep it going.

Speaking of gentrification: how about Rebecca Solnit’s latest on The Guardian?

Thanks to climate change, there is already immense suffering and loss, of places, species, crops, homes. The poor are often the people deeply rooted in place, whether they’re fisherfolk in the Mekong Delta (due to go underwater from rising seas) or farmers in desertifying Africa or India, where a horrific heatwave and drought killed at least 300 last month and left 330 million without enough water. The rich can always move on if their beachfront home floods or the weather in the Azores or Miami becomes unbearable, as it did last month in Cambodia during “the most intense heatwave ever observed in south-east Asia”, where the temperature reached 108.7F (42.6C) for the first time ever recorded.

Climate change produces famine, but the elite won’t starve.

And it’s more than just that (go read it!). One could arguably infer the gist of the article from the title, the link sub-header, and the outlet. But stopping there means filling in the presumable blanks where a word count should be. The would-be reader reinforces what s/he already thinks about the subject at hand.

The link. The outlet. The blanks we fill in. I wonder how much of this sharing without understanding reflects modern journalism, or lack thereof - the rattling of ideas in a social tin can, where the echoes sound like “you are right, of course,” because Facebook and Tinyletter and now even Snapchat can share and re-share the same posits and topics, catering to you - yes, you! - so that your eyes will see the particular ads that might rake in more money.

I often refer back to a TED Talk about the “filter bubble.” Historically, of course, there have always been filter bubbles. People subscribed to the magazines they liked, and got cards in the mail suggesting other magazines they might like. People picked out the sections of the newspaper that they enjoyed, and skimmed the rest. The algorithm model is simply catching up. 

But perhaps to burst the filter bubble is not simply to broaden your media horizons, or to “follow” more outlets, or even to sit down for coffee with someone with whom you don’t agree. Perhaps the solution is to read deeply into those texts that you do receive - not with the intent to share them, though you may, but rather with the intent to more fully develop (and consider, and reconsider) what you think you know and believe.

--C

*Those pictures are the very reason that I don’t use Facebook as a personal network. I am happy for everyone! But the beauty and radiance outpace my rational knowledge about the gap between social media and the realities of an actual, entire life. And so I decline.

[colleenmclellan]

An Industry of Your Choice

In 2011, two former Apple engineers invented a mobile app called Flipboard. Per its website, “It’s a single place to follow the stories and people that matter to you.” Direct content comes from sources like Vogue, CNN and National Geographic. Algorithm engineering moves news items or other media up the ladder, reinforcing interests or ideas expressed by the user. “Follow” any of the 34,000 topics and get specially catered news and information; “flip” a post and create a personal, magazine-style aggregate to share with others.

As of 2014 over 100 million readers accessed Flipboard, and new users arrived by the hundreds of thousands per day. For perspective: 728 million users log into Facebook every day. Where Facebook provides a user with a ready-made personal website to fill in and share, Flipboard and its “personal magazine” engage user creativity – while still supporting news feed-style input from media outlets and other creators.

There is a cultural cost to algorithms and aggregation. In his book The Filter Bubble, online organizer and MoveOn.org leader Eli Pariser describes the inherent risk of personalized news. Whittling outside news sources down to those that engage or support our existing worldviews means that diverse or challenging news and opinions are left out. Diversity, tolerance and, Pariser argues, democracy ultimately suffer.

John Hermann recently identified an exacerbating factor for the Filter Bubble. On The Awl, he describes the impact of apps hosting outside content in a native format. (Think underwriters, announced and described by a podcast host during the show.) This hosting model is repeated at the next level: operating systems are changing so that all apps are not displayed equally. Weather is on its way to interfacing with clocks and music players, so your favorite jogging mix is ready next time the sun comes out.

With this development, the Filter Bubble is at risk of closing off and drifting away, users wholly intact and unreachable. Compared to Flipboard and Facebook, major primary news sources like The New York Times, Le Monde, and the Associated Press host substantially fewer direct visitors and subscribers. When the New York Times created a paywall for website reading, the independent consulting firm McKinsey & Co. estimated that subscriptions would max out before 1 million. At 831,000 online subscribers, new purchases for digital content slowed appreciably. The approach since then has been putting original content into smaller packages, i.e. just Opinions or major news, and joining the trend of audience-catered data.

Even with original reportage, this indicates that a major news outlet is going the way of the Filter Bubble. It still incurs the research, fact-checking, and risks of news reporting while following a business model made successful by listicles and repeated news stories, like at Buzzfeed and Huffington Post.

Hermann was actually nabbed for The Awl from Buzzfeed staff, which has recently expanded to include in-depth reporting. Some Buzzfeed pieces have succeeded, and reached a viral distribution similar to that of the listicle. This may point to a solution. Can the viral marketing model reinvent original reportage, and reach high circulation? And in doing so, can it reintroduce us to someone besides ourselves? The Filter Bubble may burst, and digital empathy may be better for it.

[alanataylor]

Our bodies are programmed to consume fat and sugars because they’re rare in nature. Thus, when they come around, we should grab them. In the same way, we’re biologically programmed to be attentive to things that stimulate: content that is gross, violent, or sexual and that gossip which is humiliating, embarrassing, or offensive. If we’re not careful, we’re going to develop the psychological equivalent of obesity. We’ll find ourselves consuming content that is least beneficial for ourselves or society as a whole.

The Filter Bubble

[therefinementclub]

The Filter Bubble – Some ideas

A couple of weeks ago we did a small MassRefinement about The filter bubble and the problem of conformity. We got a couple of ideas, but feel we only scratched the surface. So we've decided to stick with the topic for a while, and meet up with more people to get new perspectives. We hope we can come up with solutions that can help people burst out of their filter bubble and expand their worldview.

Based on our initial talks we divided the problem into two challenges:

How can we create awareness about the filter bubble?

How can I as an Internet user burst or expand my own filter bubble?

We realize that not everybody are aware of the filter bubble and that they probably don’t know that they are surfing on a biased Internet. So first we need to create awareness about it, and then we should try to find ways to help people take things into their own hands.

Some quick ideas from last session:

The Random News Aggregator Most news services cater to your interests and habits. Also, most people tend to visit the same news service again and again. So what if you got the news from a different service every day, completely by chance? You would suddenly get informed on current events from a conservative perspective one day, and from a liberal perspective the other day and so forth.

Or what if there was a news service that just pulls totally random news from around the web and mashes it together into one pile of glorious randomness? Not like Google News, which pulls the most important stuff, but a mix of everything from cats to politics.

That could shake things up.

The Facebook Wall Swap Are you tired of the same boring Facebook wall that just confirms your worldview and never challenges your intellectual beliefs? We are! What about a Facebook wall swap? See Facebook through the eyes of another person. 

The Opposite Most services focus on connecting you to similar people. What if we instead focused on the opposite? People not like you also bought […] Or finding the Facebook friend that you have the least in common with and connect the two of you. So you can start sharing stuff and conversations to get a new perspective.

Short and sweet for a good start. We'll continue next week. Want to join us if you're in Oslo? Contact us on Facebook:

Public page

Group

- Gro & Johannes

[therefinementclub]

MassRefinement #13: The filter bubble and the problem of conformity

The topic of this session is inspired by how our FB Newsfeeds are growing less diverse and how FB are tracking our activity on other sites – which in turn will make our input even more uniform. We believe this is a dangerous development. Our physical lives are often made up of relationships with people that are similar to us and our digital lives could be a very valuable counterweight to potential groupthink.

Instead we see that the similarities are overstated and the differences of opinion are hidden. It happens with our FB Newsfeed and our Google search results. This is especially evident and problematic during serious and tragic events like the ongoing conflict in Gaza. If we’re never exposed to different opinions and everything confirms what we believe, it’s not very strange if we think that everyone feels the same way we do. Then how will we react when we do meet someone who disagrees with us? Will we be able to have an open discussion, or will we shy away from conversation and brand them as deviants not worth our time?

This is why we want to talk about «The filter bubble and the problem of conformity» and our goal for the session is to come up with potential solutions and methods on how to avoid being stuck in a filter bubble.

To get you thinking we've collected some articles and talks we think are worth checking out:

Eli Pariser: Beware online "filter bubbles" (TED-talk):

This TED-talk is over three years old, but sadly it's still relevant.

«[…] And this moves us very quickly toward a world in which the Internet is showing us what it thinks we want to see, but not necessarily what we need to see. As Eric Schmidt said, "It will be very hard for people to watch or consume something that has not in some sense been tailored for them." So I do think this is a problem. And I think, if you take all of these filters together, you take all these algorithms, you get what I call a filter bubble. And your filter bubble is your own personal, unique universe of information that you live in online. And what's in your filter bubble depends on who you are, and it depends on what you do. But the thing is that you don't decide what gets in. And more importantly, you don't actually see what gets edited out. […]

But we really need you to make sure that these algorithms have encoded in them a sense of the public life, a sense of civic responsibility. We need you to make sure that they're transparent enough that we can see what the rules are that determine what gets through our filters. And we need you to give us some control so that we can decide what gets through and what doesn't. Because I think 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 and new people and different perspectives. And it's not going to do that if it leaves us all isolated in a Web of one.»

Israel, Gaza, War & Data: Social Networks and the Art of Personalizing Propaganda

If you don't have time to read the whole article, you should definitely try this experiment:

«Facebook's trending pages aggregate content that are heavily shared ("trending") across the platform. If you're already logged into Facebook, you'll see a personalized view of the trend, highlighting your friends and their views on the trend. Give it a try.

Now open a separate browser window in incognito mode (Chrome: File->New Incognito Window) and navigate to the same page [copy-paste this: https://www.facebook.com/topic/Gaza/107601032603195]. Since the browser has no idea who you are on Facebook, you'll get the raw, unpersonalized feed.

How are the two different?»

Sweeping Away a Search History

This article from The New York Times gives you some handy tips on how to erase your search history which will, if not pop your filter bubble, at least give you some more space.

«Even with your history turned off, though, you are still sending a lot of personal data when you surf or search from all three, especially if you are logged in to your Google, Microsoft or Yahoo account when you search.

Gabriel Weinberg, chief executive at the alternative search engine DuckDuckGo, says there is a different way, and it can still involve making money from search-related ads.

DuckDuckGo collects no personally identifying information (like your I.P. address) as you search and doesn’t save any search history that can be tied to you. But DuckDuckGo still makes money on ads.»

Check out DuckDuckGo's explanation of the filter bubble at dontbubble.us

Tim Berners-Lee: A Magna Carta for the web (TED-talk):

«What sort of web do you want? I want one which is not fragmented into lots of pieces, as some countries have been suggesting they should do in reaction to recent surveillance. I want a web which has got, for example, is a really good basis for democracy. I want a web where I can use healthcare with privacy and where there's a lot of health data, clinical data is available to scientists to do research. I want a web where the other 60 percent get on board as fast as possible. I want a web which is such a powerful basis for innovation that when something nasty happens, some disaster strikes, that we can respond by building stuff to respond to it very quickly.

So this is just some of the things that I want, from a big list, obviously it's longer. You have your list. I want us to use this 25th anniversary to think about what sort of a web we want. You can go to webat25.org and find some links. There are lots of sites where people have started to put together a Magna Carta, a bill of rights for the web. How about we do that? How about we decide, these are, in a way, becoming fundamental rights, the right to communicate with whom I want. What would be on your list for that Magna Carta? Let's crowdsource a Magna Carta for the web. Let's do that this year. Let's use the energy from the 25th anniversary to crowdsource a Magna Carta to the web. Thank you. And do me a favor, will you? Fight for it for me. Okay? Thanks.»

– Tim Berners-Lee

Inspired? Take action and join Tim Berners-Lee's campaign The Web We Want

We're looking forward to discussing this next week! See you on Wednesday, Aug. 27th at 18:30 – Sørfløyen, Wesselsgate 6b, 0165 Oslo.

[woakin]

¿Qué tan buena es la personalización del contenido en Internet? ¿Hasta qué punto limitamos nuestras posibilidades de conocer nuevas cosas o escuchar nuevos puntos de vista?

La personalización del contenido responde a una necesidad de publicidad y marketing no de relevancia o importancia.