Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding from You

One of the things that's really interesting about the filter bubble is that it's invisible. You can't see how your Internet, the websites you visit, are different than what other people see. They are sort of slipping further and further apart.

A couple of years ago, when you Googled something, everyone would get the same result. Now, when I've done these experiments, you can really get these dramatically different results. One person Googles and sees a lot of news about protests and the other person gets travel agents talking about traveling to Egypt.

I'm basically trying to make visible this sort of membrane of personalized filters that surround us wherever we go online, and let's see what we see.

It's one thing when you turn on MSNBC or Fox News. When you do that, you know what the editing rule is -- what kind of things you'd expect to see there and what kind of things you'd expect to be edited out. But with a Facebook news feed or Google News, you don't know who they think you are. You don't know what's been edited out. It can really distort your view of the world.

There’s nothing insane about it. It’s following YOU, if you don’t click on those stories you clearly aren’t interested so why should it keep presenting them to you? They aren’t reading your mind they’re reading your HISTORY, they know what results you’ve clicked on from previous similar or identical searches in the past.

That is the point, I don't have a research HISTORY, google is trying to make something that doesn't exist for me, I don't want it to try and establish a prediction for what I'm looking for.

They don't know what I am searching for, but they are determined to predict it based on what I looked for last time, when I type in "codpiece" I want to be exposed to an unpredictable variety of references about the search word "codpiece". I do not want to have google steering me to the United States Army's new codpiece because I was looking for a price on it six months ago.

I can see being limited by google search, working for teens and people with narrow, repetitive, interests, but it should be an option, it doesn't work for someone like me.

If you don’t have a research history then they aren’t doing much filtering for you. About the only filtering they do if you have no search history is if your search brings up businesses and they can decipher your IP into a rough location it’ll focus on businesses near you.

You really aren’t understanding the situation. A single search 6 months ago isn’t going to be refocusing results. Like I said before they look for TRENDS, a single search is an OUTLIER, they don’t want to follow outliers for exactly the reason you’re complaining. What they’re looking for is if you’ve searched on “breast plate” and “chain mail” and “glaive” in recent months then your search on “codpiece” is probably NOT going to be that Army piece, so they’ll focus your results toward Medieval weapony sites.

I bet it works great for somebody like you. You’re problem is you don’t like the stunning realization that you’re predictable. Welcome to the modern world of demographic analysis, EVERYBODY is predictable, and the MOST predictable people in the world are the ones that think they aren’t.

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