Of course, we need filters. There’s too much information available not to have them. Our Google searches are filters, but he argues that Google adds an algorithmic filter of it’s own based on personal information about you. This means we don’t know what isn’t showing up in our searches. (Of course, that’s always true. We don’t know what isn’t showing up and most information won’t show up because there’s too much.) But that’s one point of the presentation and he makes a pretty good case.
The far more dangerous point he makes is when he points out the old media had “editor” gatekeepers as filters and the internet has algorithmic gatekeepers as filters. Then he says (paraphrasiing) “the problem is, the algorithmic gatekeepers haven’t developed the ethical standards of the old ethical gatekeepers.” He wants the new gatekeepers to “encode the sense of civic responsibility” that the old media did.
Of course, the old editor gatekeepers were leftists like Dan Rather, Walter Cronkite et al. with their highly refined ethical sense and the speaker longs for the good old days of “ethics.”
No system is perfect but I’d rather trust a medium that has machines filtering stuff and where alternative filters are available rather than the old media, which presented an almost uniform worldview and uniform filters, and still does. If authorities are allowed or encouraged to monkey with the automated filters, we will end up with leftist, uniform worldview filters that force us to eat our peas and make sure that “bad” stories about Zero don’t get a lot of hits.
Keep in mind the MACHINES cannot operate without first being given their filtering parameters by HUMAN BEINGS... that, I believe, would include Liberals with MOTIVES for CONTROL and GAIN.