Posted on 05/19/2011 10:03:50 AM PDT by ruralvoter
Eli Pariser made his mark on the Internet as the executive director of MoveOn.Org, the liberal group that was perhaps the first to turn the Web into a tool for massive political action.
Now he's worried the Internet is becoming too polarized, politically and otherwise, because of tools used by some of the technology and social-media world's biggest players.
His new book, "The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding from You," details the ways Facebook, Google, Aol and numerous other online hubs quietly are personalizing the Internet for their users.
(Excerpt) Read more at edition.cnn.com ...
Let me help you out, Doug. It’s called targeted marketing - a big part of what makes those greedy capitalists a little money on ‘your’ internet.
Best bet: Use multiple search engines, preferably in different countries. E.g., if you think your Google results are slanted, try Yandex (but remember: Kommittee is watching ;).
I have been hearing more and more about this type stuff. Not a good thing, imho.
You are right, I have noticed more fr links as a result of search engine search terms. This would include google and bing. The point is, who determines what is fair filtering, this author from moveon?
Nah.
It's simpler than that.
This doofus realized it cuts both ways. You know those "spontaneous" rallies in Wisconsin? The "spontaneous" rally near the White house after Bin Osama was killed, to make Obamagod look greater??
They weren't spontaneous.
The massive fraud that the medium allows, and can reveal, strips the lie from their political games. Everybody knows it now.
The potential problem from a political point of view is that the internet becomes everyone’s echo chamber. You already need to go out of your way to get views that don’t agree with yours, but as internet sites get better at filtering you’re going to have to go farther and farther out of your way to see something you don’t already agree with.
I’ve noticed more advertisements targetted at my geographic location (determined by my IP address?) Not sure if search engines are filtering results using the same criterion, but it wouldn’t surprise me.
Not that they’re blocking me from any particular reaching websites and information. But they might not be helping me find certain stuff either.
Eli Pariser has a TED talk on the subject of his book, it’s quite informative and reaffirms the requirement to use proxies when performing web searches:
http://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_bubbles.html
Now, if I'd accessed my Gmail account after first tunneling through our Miami office, you can bet the ads would have been for South Florida garbage men.
>>>Why would a trooper from Moveon be concerned with the liberal filtering of the major search engines? Is this their call for full government ownership and “censorship” of the Internet? Maybe for him, there is not enough filtering?<<<
Quite the opposite, in my opinion. Mr. Pariser is now 31 years old. Born in Maine, he’s probably a big liberal, based on his location of birth and his choice of employment. Like many liberals, he may sincerely believe that his love of free speech and democracy are related to their leftist beliefs. I was the same way - born and raised in the New York metro area, read the Times throughout my childhood, antinuclear activist. Then I started to notice that my companions and their beliefs really weren’t protecting free speech, or individual liberty, or human rights. I remember looking at some of them and thinking that what they were doing and what they saying didn’t match. And here I am.
Mr. Pariser is having his first wake-up call. He’s noticed that his leftist buddies at Facebook and Google are actually acting like elitist oligarchs. He’s at that point when he looks at his compatriots and says, “Hey, wait a minute. This doesn’t make sense.”
He’s 31 years old. There will be more wake-up calls. Wait until he’s 45 years old and see what his worldview looks like. There was a statement by David Horowitz - like myself, raised a good liberal - who said that the battle for the country won’t be between the right and the left, it’ll be between those who used to leftists and see that it is flawed and evil, and those who are still leftists.
It’ll be interesting to see where this young man goes.
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