Bursting the Filter Bubble 136
Jah-Wren Ryel writes with news that a few CS folks are working on a way to present opposing viewpoints without angering the reader. From the article: "Computer scientists have discovered a way to number-crunch an individual's own preferences to recommend content from others with opposing views. The goal? To burst the 'filter bubble' that surrounds us with people we like and content that we agree with. A recent example of the filter bubble at work: Two people who googled the term 'BP.' One received links to investment news about BP while the other received links to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, presumably as a result of some recommendation algorithm."
From the paper's abstract: "We found that recommending topically relevant content from authors with opposite views in a baseline interface had a negative emotional effect. We saw that our organic visualization design reverts that effect. We also observed significant individual differences linked to evaluation of recommendations. Our results suggest that organic visualization may revert the negative effects of providing potentially sensitive content."
Re: Viewpoints? (Score:1)
I kinda agree with you. As an investment topic you'll necessarily be interested in the BP's exposure to its oil spill, so in this case both groups will be interested in the environmental damage. So I imagine the BP example is flawed.
Or maybe I have it backward?
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One might be Greenpeace's response, the other an article about how the company's stock price is affected by the spill.
Re: Viewpoints? (Score:4, Insightful)
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no, but I would also want to know how well the company could manage the cost of damages from another spill: which will undoubtedly happen if they don't invest more heavily in preventive measures and remediation preparation. his would be important to me as an environmentalist and as someone who wanted to make sure my legislators were thinking with information instead of cash.
Reverts or Reverse ? (Score:1)
TFA used two "revert"s and I am wondering if the use of "revert"s is correct or should the word be "reverse", instead ?
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I think it was meant to be "reverse". "Revert' makes little sense in context.
its more than just political sensitivity (Score:5, Interesting)
i'm a generalist, i work in a few fields, including EE and CS - my colleague is pure CS
we're trying to have a conversation about a topic (distributed clocks) and based on our histories
we get entirely different search results, completely non-overlapping. his are general distributed
systems results and mine are narrowly turned to sensor networks
i had to ask him to make me a bibliography because I got sent into an entirely different
alleyway of the literature
thanks google
Re:its more than just political sensitivity (Score:5, Informative)
Its even more problematic in areas like climate change where a large portion of the population appears unable to distinguish laymans commentary from actual research by climate scientists. If people spend a lot of time looking at conspiracy theory , creationist, or other similarly themed stuff on the net, google throws lots of denial sites at them, whereas people who have more analyical interests are more likely to get articles from science sites. The problem here is that folks with the conspiracy bent end up having no way to find information that might clear up their confusion if all they are getting is wattsup or alex jones or whatever. This just feeds the confirmation biases, and thats proving really harmful to science education right now.
Re:its more than just political sensitivity (Score:5)
Most people don't buy into climate conspiracy theory. IMHO, this new method is more likely to be employed by paid Public Relations types to blunt pressure calling for social and ecological responsibility. If they can target unhinged conspiracies as "bubbles", they can preferentially target informed progressives (or any online community) to serve the interests of big business.
I wouldn't trust the advertising business to be even-handed with acquired psychological tools.
Re:its more than just political sensitivity (Score:5, Insightful)
TFA could conceivably be titled, "How to turn up the Noise on reality-based social circles".
'Having trouble marketing in Facebook and Twitter audiences? Here's how to insinuate your ads into their conversations while keeping their protests down to a minimum...'
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TFA could conceivably be titled, "How to turn up the Noise on reality-based social circles".
Only if this specific algorithm were implemented anywhere besides this academic test.
Re:its more than just political sensitivity (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem here is that folks with the conspiracy bent end up having no way to find information that might clear up their confusion if all they are getting is wattsup or alex jones or whatever.
Your point is well-reasoned. But, unfortunately, I think you are starting from a false premise because you simply do not understand how delusions work.
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Re:its more than just political sensitivity (Score:5, Interesting)
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The problem here is one of correlation vs causation.
So why do the experts say different things in private than in public? What's so special about climatology that even rather small technical problems can't be discussed publicly?
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Examples that haven't been debunked? Obviously your google search results might be a tad different from mine, so URLs would help.
Re:its more than just political sensitivity (Score:5, Insightful)
What's so special about climatology that even rather small technical problems can't be discussed publicly?
There's nothing special about climatology in that regards.
It's completely normal for people doing work to not want you to see their errors; only the successfully completed result.
The only thing special about climatology is the number of people (who are completely unable to form an educated opinion on the subject)
that grasp at any straw to support their preconceived ideas. This applies to both sides.
What doesn't apply to both sides is the concerted effort, by the same lobbyists and think tanks who shilled for Big Tobacco, to manufacture misinformation and bad science in order to cloud the debate.
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The only thing special about climatology is the stakes
FTFY. Whether superstring theory ends up being a key part of a valid theory of everything is mostly irrelevant to us. As a result, any biases, shenanigans, etc aren't particularly important.
The theory of anthropogenic climate change has deep relevance to modern society because we might have to completely restructure our energy system. There are huge winners and huge losers should that happen. Trillions of dollars are at stake either way.
The casual approach used in most of science just doesn't work in
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The casual approach used in most of science just doesn't work in this situation.
Why do you think that science is "casual". Do you think the germ theory arose because Dr. Pasteur was casual about his germs? Do you think we have nuclear weapons because the Manhattan Project was casual about atoms? Do you think we have the myriad of drugs we have today because the drug companies are staffed by casual scientists? Science works because people are continually testing things: nothing is accepted as true. The scientist who could disprove the Anthropogenic Global Warming argument would win ever
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Why do you think that science is "casual".
Observation.
Do you think the germ theory arose because Dr. Pasteur was casual about his germs? Do you think we have nuclear weapons because the Manhattan Project was casual about atoms? Do you think we have the myriad of drugs we have today because the drug companies are staffed by casual scientists? Science works because people are continually testing things: nothing is accepted as true.
Do you think that the Manhattan Project would have worked out as successfully, if we had approached it like we would superstring theory? That is, come up with a ton of theories and play with large particle accelerators for a few decades? Do you think drugs would be as effective or safe, if we treated them as rigorously as traffic flow models or the gaming experiment of experimental economics?
One of the more notorious aspects of the "Climategate" thing, where someone released emails and code o
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I think traffic models are more rigorous than you realise. Also, if TPTB thought that we could win a war with superstring theory it'd be solved next week.
You only think that the data sets were merged/normalised in arbitrary ways because you don't seem to understand statistics. I would be more than happy to help you: if you could send me some examples of data sets I can try to explain the techniques used.
Also: if you don't think we should do anything you are insane. I agree that at least to some extent we wi
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You only think that the data sets were merged/normalised in arbitrary ways because you don't seem to understand statistics.
No, it was because someone looked [wattsupwiththat.com] at the actual code (the linked example shows data being multiplied by a random looking array of numbers which happens to generate a "hockey stick" shape in the result). The comments [anenglishmanscastle.com] are quite [wattsupwiththat.com] entertaining [pjmedia.com].
Also: if you don't think we should do anything you are insane.
[...]
but if you don't mitigate it at all it'll go way beyond the point where it's possible to adapt.
No evidence has ever been provided for this assertion. Actual predictions indicate relatively small temperature changes less than what the Earth experienced [wikipedia.org] 50 or so million years ago (I see a graph that estimates peak temperature increase was 12 C over present day (t
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Moneyed interests who quote snippets from any such discussion out of context in order to discredit science and delay any attempts to do anything about the problem, since maintaining status quo is in their short-term interest. But a lot of the credit must also be given to the very human tendency to ignore any unpleasant potential outcomes, even if they're likely (which explains why casinos stay in busin
Re:its more than just political sensitivity (Score:4, Informative)
When you really dig into the heart of this problem, IMHO it really comes down to the Scientists of the world being pretty dishonest in the first place. Although they're doing it with good intent, it's still wrong and it still causes a big part of the problem. The pattern goes like this: Scientists see a Big Problem for the World on the horizon in some of their data. They're not yet "standards of declaring new physics" sure of their conclusions, but the conclusions are so startling that they feel it's worth society expending effort to head off the possibility. Step two is when they say, "Well, most of the voting population isn't science-educated and/or doesn't understand probability and risk assessment, so they won't be able to rationally make the right call and join us in this effort, and we have to do something about that", and then they proceed to overstate their case and basically lie to everyone about the data and the probability of impact (not to mention the probability of the correctness of their assessments) in order to drum up support and dollars. Then when skeptics go on the attack, they find easy targets, because the case *was* overstated. Once you've started that cycle, there's no end to the debate over who's being dishonest about what.
Climate Change / AGW isn't the first time this has happened in Science, and it especially isn't the first time it's happened in earth/natural/climate -related sciences. Saving the whales (and every truly unimportant species of beetle), or the Global Cooling scare that preceded Global Warming are good examples. The public has been lead down the wrong path by the nose by natural scientists many times before, with big headlines in the pop science mags over the past several decades. They know what it looks like, and they're tired of it. AGW-response is as big a business as oil now. Think of all the dollars going into "renewables" and government offices and programs to oversee them and such. Most of those dollars are a complete waste unless they're pushing towards solutions like Space-based solar or Nuclear Fusion, because anything short of those requires we kill off most of the human population first to drop our energy requirements down to an acceptable level for the petty darling renewables of the green movements.
Back on point: this is obviously a list compiled by an AGW-denier, so take it with all the salt you want, but read the quotes and datelines. They *are* real, and they do make a point: http://www.examiner.com/article/arctic-ocean-warming-icebergs-growing-scarce-washington-post-reports
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And whether gasoline, diesel, or other, similar fuels, they're easy to handle and fairly safe liquids. That leads to the remarkably high energy density of hydrocarbon fuels and success of the respective power systems (such as the diesel and internal combustion engines).
i foresee electric cars for example becoming the norm simply because there is a lot more room for improvement in the tech that will make them more efficient and powerful than fuel burners
While that would
Re:its more than just political sensitivity (Score:4, Insightful)
Apparently you are confident that you are reading their private correspondence correctly.
Why do you think you are?
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The TL;DR summary of the linked article is climate skeptic/denialist Steve McIntyre rhetorically follows one relatively rational participant arou
Re:its more than just political sensitivity (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm pretty sure that's what it means unless there's some ordination process to enter the Church of Climatology I don't know about.
*False* authourity. Any old random scientist wouldn't be good enough. Appealing to a relevant expert is not a fallacy.
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Recall the fallacy of appeal to authority.
An appeal to authority is not fallacious if:
- The authority being cited is operating within their area of expertise.
- The authority is well-qualified to answer the question.
An appeal to authority is strongest if the authority's response to the question is the same as other authorities have to the same question e.g. a physicist explaining why the sky is blue (well-understood at this point) is a stronger argument than a physicist explaining why string theory is true (possibly right, but possibly wrong).
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Just because someone is technically a "layman" in the field doesn't mean that they are less knowledgeable than climate scientists.
No but it correlates very strongly
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Erm, if you're only exposed to "concensus" views and around the edges you get sympathetic nutcases like Lewandowsky claiming anyone who disagrees is a fantasist with a mental problem (oh, the sweet irony), aren't you in exactly the position you are concerned about?
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The problem here is that folks with the conspiracy bent end up having no way to find information that might clear up their confusion if all they are getting is wattsup or alex jones or whatever.
This is the first time I've seen anyone try to claim that Anthonny Watt's blog was the stuff of conspiracy theory. It's a clever technique. If we can associate anyone that questions the IPCC with the likes of Alex Jones and David Icke, we can avoid having to address any questions they have at all.
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Yeah, that's why I suggest making it a button to click, to see what one might be missing from within one's own de facto silo (no matter how diligent one might be in seeking diverging views, it's also something we can easily not do well.) As for probs with source, good data, all that, we already have that problem. Gimme a button, lemme see what I might not, otherwise. In the end I'll choose what to read. Having more from which to choose seems a good thing, albeit requiring me to make more decisions - but
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Re:its more than just political sensitivity (Score:5, Informative)
It is exceedingly unlikely that the results don't overlap after the first few, but if you can produce a copy of the two sets of results, I will forward them to someone on the Google Search team for debugging.
People hugely overestimate the effect of personalization -- it is a ranking tweak not a complete change to the search engine. It does not make economic sense to have personalized whole-web indexes.
Btw, if you don't like personalization ever, it is pretty easy to turn off:
https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/54048?hl=en [google.com]
Just remove web history and uncheck private results.
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Based on what's being responded to this post, it doesn't seem an isolated case. Granted, there's no proof, but given what we've all seen, it appears to be at least somewhat true.
The simple solution is simply using a "trash" browser instance that you can completely clear all cookies and local data from, you can avoid the personalization almost entirely, at least for a short while.
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Does Google adapt based on IP even if you never log into their "services"? I never log in and don't see any results tailored to me, but now I'm wondering whether that's actually true.
Regarding the paper: Don't bother reading it, it's superficial CS stuff with no proper background theory, they don't even model preferences right. :-(
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You'll never really know will you? But I wonder how they handle disparate groups sharing a single IP in that case.
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You'll never really know will you?
Isn't that testable? Set up two identical browsers on two geographically close machines, make them perform a series of differing and clearly biased searches (e.g. about a political topic or shopping preference) and compare the results of one and the same query from both machines after a few days or weeks.
I was hoping somebody did that already...
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I never thought that Myopia was communicable.
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You could open an "incognito" or Private browser window for the search, then your cookies would not be visible and your history would not be applied.
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Wrong answer. The right answer is: use Google, and Bing, and DDG, and as many other search engines are you can. All have their biases, and with all their results combined, you're probably closer to getting a somewhat balanced view of reality than either choosing or shunning a single one of them.
Critical thinking (Score:5, Insightful)
It is good to see someone researching ways to combat group think with technology.
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That worked well for the lemmings, didn't it?
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How so? Because we all agree that something is right, up to the point that we don't really care whether it's right at all as long as we agree on it?
That's called "religion".
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Religion and money have a lot in common. Both rely on faith these days.
horsedrinkwater (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm with you in wanting to combat "groupthink" but I don't think the technology in TFA will do it
First, who 'scores' the viewpoints? how is one organization weighted against another? ex: Fox News should be in the tabloid/nonsense news category but because Fox is kind of 'grandfathered' in as the 4th national network they are considered 'mainstream'
does this mean a person who goes to motherjones.com alot would get Fox News in this system? who determines that?
i would consider Fox News a 'lower' viewpoint...different sure, but not in any value added way....ignorance isn't an "opposing viewpoint"
2nd, is this going to be an "add-on"? Is the goal to get Google, etc to use it by default?
because people would ignore this tech for the same reason they don't bother seeking out differing viewpoints!!!
unless you force it on them the people who need it won't do it!!!
3rd, if forced upon them, people will inevitably train themselves to ignore the 'suggested alternate viewpoint' box just like they train themselves to ignore Google.com's "sponsored results" or tune out a commercial
To me, this is an example of why academics fail in public policy. They look at a problem and see human opposition as something uncategorizable so instead of understanding that **the problem isn't that people don't get opposing viewpoints...the problem is they willfully choose not to listen**
as they say, "You can lead a horse to water but you can't force them to drink"
this is like holding the horse's face in a water fountain
CNN starting decline, Fox News there already (Score:3)
it is lower...it started that way and sunk ever since
Fox News is about population control, not informing decision makers in an entertaining way as the 4th Estate in a Social Democracy
you're giving them way too much credit
Now, if you said that CNN is getting so bad it has **devolved** into being almost as ignorant as Fox News I would agree...
but there's a key difference!
sometimes true, but I for one enjoy REASONED oppos (Score:3)
I'm sure that sometimes people choose not to read opposing viewpoints. On the other hand, I very much enjoy the opposing viewpoint when it's presented in the style I prefer - with logic, fact based, and backed up with details like relevant numbers. Very often, it's not so much the opposing conclusion that turns me off, but the illogical, purely emotional and often sarcastic presentation.
In the post I'm replying to, for example, I enjoyed the second part, discussing possible reasons, but wouldn't have clic
One conservative to another - Rush doesn't claim (Score:2)
From one conservative to another, be careful with "news" from Rush if you don't see/read/hear other sources much. Rush will tell you himself he's NOT a journalist, he's a satirist. Sometimes he makes a good point and he's a good source of opinions and entertainment, but not a good source for facts.
Mainstream is MAIN STREAM (Score:2, Troll)
Fox News should be in the tabloid/nonsense news category but because Fox is kind of 'grandfathered' in as the 4th national network they are considered 'mainstream'
No, it's mainstream because more people watch it for news than anything.
You may disagree with the ideological bent but you seem to be confusing heavily partisan shows that are on Fox News channel, with the actual news coverage - of which there is a lot.
Fox news covered all of the major news stories as well as any other channel - like trains going
nonsense (Score:2)
n/t
Definition (Score:2)
How is mainstream, by definition, not the most popular and heavily watched news channels? That is what the "main" group of news watchers are watching - so how can it not be Mainstream?
What is nonsense is ignoring the definition of a word because it results in something you disagree with.
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Don't confuse group think and tribalism.
The main difference is that group think is a problem for leaders, while tribalism is what motivates all the followers.
You can't combat tribalism nearly so easily as group think,
since the group identification is more than just a matter of facts.
Otherwise, the Red Sox wouldn't have any fans.
Re:Critical thinking (Score:4, Insightful)
> "I know you won't believe me, but the highest form of Human Excellence is to question oneself and others." - Socrates
> It is good to see someone researching ways to combat group think with technology.
But that always, always starts with the guy in the mirror. First, get your own mind right (as Socrates says).
Next, most people listen to those friends whom they respect. You can challenge them to examine alternative points of view. The only thing I would ask (of everyone) is that you respect people who look at things as honestly as they know how, but reach a different conclusion from you. That's part of the human condition. The name-calling and "group think," as you call it, stops when we decide that it will stop.
I lean conservative/libertarian in philosophy, but I avoid polemics from all sides. My morning ritual nowadays consists of first checking the weather (because of my job), then heading to Real Clear Politics (www.realclearpolitics.com) to get a diversity of opinion, from Ezra Klein and Robert Kuttner to George Will and Mark Steyn. I also love a good (read: FRIENDLY) debate. If I see name-calling on either side, I lose interest in a hurry.
But have a friendly discussion with your friends. The old saying goes, "don't discuss politics or religion," but I say the opposite. If you show them respect, they'll learn to respect you, and in turn, they'll learn to respect opposing points of view. You might even learn a few things.
I certainly have. :)
Wanglish (Score:2)
Reads like somebody trying to write in English, and utterly failing.
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Reads like somebody trying to write in English, and utterly failing.
Sounds like the sort who want to find only what they've already found.
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I couldnt say it fails to be English. However after perusing every link I am left without any information about what this 'organic visualization' thing actually is, and how it's supposed to work.
Leaving me only to comment more generally that it is not the search engines job to read the users mind, and shouldnt be, if only because it is impossible to do that with any amount of computing power. It's one of those disastrously attractive ideas that may take us another decade to finally start getting over.
Re: "Organic visualization" (Score:4, Interesting)
The "organic visualization" thing and its jargon are described in this thesis [benfry.com] done at the MIT Media Lab. This is what happens when postmodernists try to improve on Tufte. [edwardtufte.com] Some of it is pretentious bullshit. But there may be the genesis of some new phone apps in there.
Here's a good, but unrelated, example of "organic visualization": BitListen [bitlisten.com] This is a little HTML5/JavaScript page which depicts transactions on the Bitcoin block chain. An older example is Muckety [muckety.com]. This can be done well, but most attempts in this direction are duds.
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Interesting and useful for Slashdot (Score:5, Interesting)
I only skimmed the paper briefly but it is interesting in that:
- User clicks a wordcloud keyword/hashtag that draws lines from it to multiple florets (individual nacelle-like microflowers in a sunflower head), each of which represents a tweet in recent portion of a feed.
- Repudiates the idea of filtering to meet viewer expectations so everyone can see the same content.
- A cuteness factor (or what they say is "organic" being like a flower) apparently reduces gut reaction to tweets you do not agree with
- Viewer is able to actively pick tweets to read. Presumably as the sunflower head image is mathematically generated and each floret's color could be tweaked to match a positive/negative sentiment score, allowing the user to pick only items that agree/disagree with them but to do so consciously.
This last point would seem to be ideal and I'd like to see slashdot include something more than the slider ("read only above this score"), particularly for a topic that has over say 500 or 800 replies. How about a data visualization that shows all the posts/threads for an article and lets the user select based on where in this chart a post is? At the very list, something 2-dimensional not 1-dimensional.
How about... (Score:4, Insightful)
We quit this crap of trying to target things to audiences and get back to the good old days of yore when we went out and found things to fascinate, inform and enrich ourselves rather than suffering pigeon-holing. Honestly, I think farcebook, amazon and others have it completely wrong. I'm bored by the same ol - same ol. I'm an explorer and love to wander and see new things. Keep showing me what i've already seen or already bought and I'm losing attention.
Re:How about... (Score:4, Insightful)
What "good old days" where those? When you read the newspaper that conformed to your political viewpoint; the weekly magazine that covered any world events only as far as it affected you and others like you; watched only the TV shows that reinforced what you thought you already knew and believed?
Re:How about... (Score:5, Insightful)
What "good old days" where those? When you read the newspaper that conformed to your political viewpoint; the weekly magazine that covered any world events only as far as it affected you and others like you; watched only the TV shows that reinforced what you thought you already knew and believed?
No.
The internet before all this tracking of metrics and trying to anticipate what I'd like to see more of. I don't know what I want to see next, but I generally don't revisit the same old thing. After I bought a new camera is not the time to keep showing me camera stuff. When I looked up something on ebay to see what I might get for it, they keep trying to interest me in it over a year later - I don't buy everything I look at and there's no "I'm just trying to get an estimate of what I might get from a suck^H^H^H^Hbuyer so piss off and don't try to waggle it under my eyes for the next twelve bloody months" tick-box.
Just anecdotal, but the things facebook seems to track and then keep showing me have about 95% odds of not being of interest at all, the remaining 5% I wouldn't click on a link on there anyway or it's only tangentially relevant to something I was posting about.
After a while I just tune stuff out.
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http://edition.cnn.com/2005/LAW/06/24/ramasastry.website.prices/ [cnn.com]
Your search habits fed back into a price just for 'you' at that moment on a sales site.
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At some point price customisation or "dynamic" pricing must have become very useful and widespread.
http://edition.cnn.com/2005/LAW/06/24/ramasastry.website.prices/ [cnn.com]
Your search habits fed back into a price just for 'you' at that moment on a sales site.
Alas, that was what I was interested in yesterday or at some time in the past. It's like being in a discussion with someone who keeps bringing up a point that you thought was resolved a while ago, but they think needs more exposure. Imagine how you'd enjoy such a discussion.
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Are we to a point where instead of "ad words" Google has come to the realization that a company can PAY not to have bad gossip said about them?
This is so much like TV News and commercial advertising. Great. Now the internet is as broken as the TV.
[insert frowny face here]
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Just because I might LIKE to confirm my world view -- is it in societies best interest to automate an "eco chamber" on the internet?
The rights of privacy only extend to our Government -- there's still this gray area with services and corporations. I don't think there is any clearer scenario to say; "we've gone to far." It's one thing to optimize a search -- it's another to play a digital psychologist and give different results to different people based on their profile. Down that path leads people who don't
Push vs Pull (Score:5, Insightful)
If you search for X, and get confronted with an adversarial opinion, the contrary information is being pushed at you which is threatening and probably responsible for the negative emotional reaction.
If you search for X, see where the adversarial opinions are, but don't actually have to see them when you want to, that's more a pull mechanism and you feel much less threatened as a result.
From what I can tell glancing at the paper their system is very much a pull mechanism which probably lowers the negative response.
Wait what? (Score:4, Funny)
Two people who googled the term 'BP.' One received links to investment news about BP while the other received links to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, presumably as a result of some recommendation algorithm.
So I tried this, I wanted to see if the Internet thought I was a democrat or a republican but it just came up with a bunch of links to "Big Penises" I was outraged, and after 15 to 30 min or so of confirming the content I switched search engines. The algorithms are clearly out of control!
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Two people who googled the term 'BP.' One received links to investment news about BP while the other received links to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, presumably as a result of some recommendation algorithm.
So I tried this, I wanted to see if the Internet thought I was a democrat or a republican but it just came up with a bunch of links to "Big Penises" I was outraged, and after 15 to 30 min or so of confirming the content I switched search engines. The algorithms are clearly out of control!
I just tried this and got... financial news, info about the oil spill on both sides of the coin (i.e. How BP got screwed, What BP doesn't want you to know), and local gas stations. I guess this means that I'm interested in the stock market (which I am, though I don't own BP stock), I'm open to understanding the facts on both sides (i.e. a balanced viewpoint), and I recently searched for gas stations (which I did, but for the local Shell stations not BP).
Blank Slate (Score:2)
Wiping all your cookies and history in your browser might help a bit, but probably not if you're using Chrome or logged into Google.
Also, the Startpage search engine claims to use Google, but anonymously.
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Opposing or similar views? (Score:1)
So this algorithm can figure out what your political viewpoint is, as well as the viewpoint of a news article.
This could be used to show you articles which contradict your viewpoint - or articles which reinforce your viewpoint.
I think the latter is more likely in practice. It's more profitable.
Exaggerated? (Score:2)
How existent is this "bubble"? (Score:5, Insightful)
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When you interact with these people do you ever notice that they've got certain "facts" that you do not?
The "bubble" is of information that is unique to the perspective -- or reinforcing that perspective. It can also be called an echo chamber where you hear back what you preach.
The fact that you don't "see" a bubble is due to you not being cocooned in your own rhetoric. Meeting people who disagree and not getting horribly bothered is a sign of good mental health.
/ begin jokes here ////
Personally, I look for
Or (Score:1)
You could learn a bit of tolerance and use a search engine that doesn't try to profile you like https://ixquick.com./ [ixquick.com.]
Rosie
Won't work (Score:1)
Not with the general population, the prejudice is inside them, and even if you slip in an opposing view once they notice that's what's been done you've lost them again.
I would say it's almost impossible to change average adult minds and opinions on things they consider important by having them read articles with opposing views.
Dude, just log out (Score:2)
Seriously, what the hell?
I understand how people can live in an echo chamber and suffer from monoculture. And targeted ads and recommended searches and all that jazz can contribute.
But, seriously? Just log out of google. Run your search. If they don't know who you are, you get an unfiltered search.
Is that so hard?
Google is doing that? => No cookies! (Score:2)
But how well does the filter filter content? (Score:2)
I mean, I occasionally read stuff from the other side,,, but a fair bit of it ranges from Michelle Bachman (R-wacko)'s la-la land pronouncements, to a guy on a mailing list I'm on, who's sure that with the Fed printing money, it's devaluating as we type, and oh, yes, we live in a soclaist America....
How does this "bubble-bursting filter" screen out the total crazies, to get *reasonable* contrasting information?
mark
It's still filtering... (Score:2)
Blogs have destroyed public debate. (Score:1)
The "Filter Bubble" is in part the product of too much information and a very poor design for public discussion, the blog, which is intentional. Even Slash Dot has the core flaw even though it is a forum, technically. If there is a filter bubble at all, it is in part created by the need for moderation of blogs and the lack of a good mechanism to handle topic drift, sub-threads, and the way to create an interest, even compelling one, for opposing or different views.
I draw on my recall of how on the USENET