My Bubbly Filter

FMCS3100 Project.

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The internet was supposed to bring all these things, but can we really fault it for maintaining status? Like, we were expecting people to go searching for the uncomfortable?

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chainsawsuit.com

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Is the filter bubble a prison imposed by hidden algorithms that dictate our lives?

No

These algorithms are powerful, but they are simply providing what we used to go hunting for. Everyone loves to say that they would like to be exposed to all sides of a debate, to hear all the information, to be a rational thinking human who only makes rational choices. But, that was not the case pre SEO, nor pre internet. 

The bubble is the new explanation of inherent flaws in society being exemplified by new technology.  

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The other main argument about the evil comes with partisan politics. If my entire feed is full of Greenies, it may distort perceptions of the current political climate. But again, this is not purely algorithm. Speakers at SMW14 from Mamamia observed that the apolitical #auspol tag seemed to be mostly left. Even without filtering on Twitter, this distortion happens. And it leads to some serious confusion over our conservative government. 

More than algorithm, there are probably problems with the tags chosen, as well as the medium - there are probably more millennials taking to twitter to discuss news than boomers.

Similarly, even if there was no filtering, psychology says we will scroll past the things that disagree with currently held views anyway. And if we do read, it simply reinforces the previously held views despite contradictory evidence. We all say we are open to new evidence that confronts out current world view, but the practice seems to be at odds with the perceptions. 

This seems to be another case of old phenomenon on new technology. 

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This is an oft used example of the dangers of filtering. The second person is being kept unintentionally ignorant about the events in Egypt. 

With all due respect, I must disagree. 

Who just Googles a location when looking for news? If I were looking for news (whilst not knowing it was currently happening), nearly all decent news sites have a “world” page with brief facts. Putting travel up high seems like something likely - with paid advertising from a travel company. 

Again, who would just search Egypt? This speaks more to how people are becoming lazier in searching than an inescapable bubble of blissful ignorance. This is a soap sud bubble - highly transparent and highly permeable, and very easy to pop.  

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Why Care about FB?

So, the obvious question - if social media is for the social, why is a big deal that content is being filtered? Apparently around 60% of millennials use social media for political news, and the older generations aren’t that far behind. And the millennials use solely social media*

Using my feed as an example, it would take about a 2 second glance to find where I align politically - so it is not shocking that suggested pages and sites are aligning. Now, if you are not following news sources or political groups (if I keep going with this post assessment, there is a whole essay on that), you are likely to get the popular (read viral) content. Buzzfeed is probably going to fare far better than The Guardian in getting seen. Now, both cover issues, but this is BF’s coverage of the housing comments featuring a few graphs and a few quotes - enough to know there is an issue. Here we have one of multiple Guardian articles on the topic, featuring analysis from both sides. 

If shareability determines what gets page views, and page views determine what is written about (cause yay capitalism), then I weep for the state of political discourse. We are already seeing it with Shorten’s  “zingers” and the three word slogan mentality. If a human tragedy isn’t local enough or viral enough, it won’t exist. It needs a sob story, some controversy (was an alleged offender from a racial/religious minority? Can we start a gun debate?) or it is not worth the effort. 

* The part of me that has to BS statistical competency next semester is questioning whether “I get all my news from social media and don’t go to news websites” means they just look at the text on social media, or they follow a link on the feed to an old school news site. Whilst they both mean content is subject to the interest aspect of the filter, the implications are dramatically different for media industries. 

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Why Is Facebook Page Reach Decreasing? More Competition And Limited Attention

Every Page on Facebook wants everything they post shown to everyone. But people only read a limited amount of News Feed per day. There simply isn't room for..

This is the most complete algorithm I can find, and it is by no means complete. A cursory Google will give closer to 50+ parameters. Without a nice sized leak, it will be impossible to get the exact parameters used, and then it will simply change again - it looks like it may have recently changed to feature friends content higher again. This may have been in response to certain allegations, or due to a new plan to host paid content themselves.

Regardless of reasons, there is some fancy maths that we do not understand that dictates what gets shown and how quickly. It is not a chronological feed like Twitter. We also know that there is something similar with our Google results, but this is a similarly tight guarded industry secret. 

So, some people argue ethics, should be able to see everything and allowed to pic etc (or on the business side that it is extortionate). The thing is: 1) these sites are businesses, not free services. We are the product, and a company will change the product to get the best profit and that really shouldn’t be viewed as evil; 2) the algorithms appear to prioritise what we actually want to see, not purely paid content;

3) Nothing is explicitly hidden, we just have to look. 

On social media, if you want to see it, you can find it. 

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Beware online "filter bubbles"

As web companies strive to tailor their services (including news and search results) to our personal tastes, there's a dangerous unintended consequence: We get trapped in a "filter bubble" and don't get exposed to information that could challenge or broaden our worldview. Eli Pariser argues powerfully that this will ultimately prove to be bad for us and bad for democracy.

This seems to be the TED talk that got the filter bubble on the wider agenda. Transcript here.

In very brief, algorithms feed us the content they think we want to see. We do not get to see what is being omitted. This can lead to distorted perceptions of the world.

However, I tend to disagree a lot of the further implications. So, when people are confronted with the news that search results have filtered out political dissent, most people will say they wish to be fully informed and thus see articles on both sides of the spectrum. Thing is, the algorithms were designed to give us all more relevant results. This means the things we click on more regularly. And that means even if faux news had shown up with a rather right wing commentary on an important issue, most of us (I get the impression the Tumblr demographic is more leftist) will scroll past, or open for a laugh. Hell, I’m in multiple moderate left groups who blanket refuse to link to Murdoch even if it is a valid source.

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An Intro of Sorts

On the off chance anyone out side of class reads this, this blog is for a uni course - Digital Culture Studies - and will thus focus on the topic more than a normal blog - the apparent “filter bubble” epidemic. My only exposure to Tumblr thus far has been subreddits mocking this place (and the SJW extremism), so don’t judge my terrible formatting. If this place seems cool and Reddit lied, the topics will change.

To the filter bubble topic - this is, in very brief. the product of search results online being the result of a more complicated queries than just “what is most similar to the search term”. The parameters are apparently around the 70+ considerations mark, but that will come later.

The general point for this intro - this is a uni assessment, if I like Tumblr I might keep this going and branch out to other topics. But, for now, we discuss the filter bubble, with a personal view that the bubble is being given the blame for human behaviour.