Video: http://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_bubbles.html
- web based on relevance, and what relevance might mean.
Summary: 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.
Outline:
- shift happening in information flow online:
- talking about how conservatives disappeared from his facebook news feed, because he was clicking more on progressive friends links, and started editing out the conservatives. Invisible algorithmic editing of the web, without asking you.
- Two people searching for something may get very different search results: Google looks at 57 signals to personally tailor search results. There is no standard google anymore.
- Having friends google egypt and send results - the results are very different - one person gets info about protests, the other gets info about travel.
- Companies call it "personalization": google, facebook, newspapers (huffington post)
- Internet showing us what it thinks we want to see, not necessarily what we need to see.
- Eric Schmidt, Google: "It will be very hard for people to watch something that has not in some sense been tailored for them."
- All these algorithms create a filter bubble.
- You dont get to see what gets filtered out
- Information vegetables / information dessert - to create balance
- The algorithms look on what you click on the most and it creates imbalance
- In a broadcast society, gatekeepers controlled the flow of information - internet swept this away. But thats not what is happening now. It is a passing of the torch from human gatekeepers to algorithmic gate keepers. Algorithms have lack of embedded ethics.
- The algorithms not keyed just to relevance, but also things that are important, uncomfortable, challenging, other points of view.
- Last time we were here 1915: Newspapers and responsibility. - People realized good democracy requires good flow of info to the people.
- The new gatekeepers need to code that responsibility into what they are writing.
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