Export thread

http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/03/eli-pariser-at-ted/all/1

...political activist Eli Pariser told the Technology Entertainment and Design conference on Wednesday, the internet has quickly encased us in personalization bubbles where increasingly the only people and ideas we encounter are the ones we already know.

...

Take his Facebook page, for example. Pariser used to receive comments and links from readers on both sides of the political spectrum. Then one day he noticed his conservative friends had disappeared; only links from his liberal friends remained. Facebook, without asking him, had seen that he clicked more often on links from left-leaning friends and simply edited out the rest using an algorithm which hides from view the kinds of content, by past behavior, it has determined you are less likely to interact with.

Click to expand...

Very interesting thought. To some degree humans do this naturally - we form relationships more quickly with those that agree with us than those that don't.

However, this increased specialization, helped along by algorithms that do this very efficiently (ostensibly so the service meets our perceived needs better) may actually serve to polarize us, and move us further apart from others, rather than bringing us all closer together.

Huh, I didn't realize that there was a filter. I'm an unabashed liberal, but some of my best friends are staunch conservatives. The debate keeps our friendships lively, I think. I had noticed they weren't posting much any more on FB. I guess I should go check their pages.

Thank goodness my life is more than Facebook. When I'm online I pay attention to a lot of people who have opinions that differ from mine, (and the same would hold true in real life if I had much of a real life). I seek out reviews of games, movies, etc. from people who have different tastes in media than I do. I read threads (on this board and others) about subjects I know nothing about, and try to pay attention to both sides. Maybe I'm really weird, but hearing only what I've heard and approve of gets boring.

All of my friends are still showing, except the ones I have blocked from the feed myself and that is more on a "they never shut up!" issue than a political one.

I have blocked people before specifically for their political beliefs. But it has more to do with the WAY that they express these beliefs more than anything. One guy that is very memorable believes everything he reads by the right, thinks Obama was born outside the US, thinks vaccinations cause autism, etc. etc. etc. He doesn't listen, he always posts outright lies and never - EVER - backs down, even when shown proof.

I can't and won't deal with idiots like that. And before someone sees this and thinks I'm talking about them, this is not about anyone who has ever to my knowledge been on Halforums in any of it's iterations.

figmentPez said:

Thank goodness my life is more than Facebook.

Click to expand...

Indeed. This just makes me leery of clicking on anything at all. I don't need FB to "sort" my friends for me.

And here I thought this thread was going to be about the Wall Street trading algorithms that have made it almost impossible for human traders to compete.


--Patrick

Funnily enough I myself wondered if this would happen a while back ago: with all this talk of the death of the mainstream press, I started wondering if this meant that since on the Internet you can focus on a specific audience with specific beliefs seeing as you don't have to make up for massive overhead costs like your average newspaper or TV station (assuming it's not supported by uber wealthy interest groups - do I REALLY have to mention names?) the "press" would eventually lose even the slimmest illusion of objectivity and thus people would only get info by people with the same beliefs as them, with all the bias that implies.

Naturally, whenever I tried discussing this with anyone, my concerns were always dismissed with arguments such as "Dude, the media is incredibly biased NOW. When this fragmentation you speak of occurs, we will FINALLY be able to separate the crap from the REAL news!". While I do agree that there is great bias in the media (even here), I don't think having a huge number of super biased sources for you to choose from is the way to go.

I guess we'll just have to wait and see what comes out of this. Hopefully as there will be demand for biased news, there will be something to cater to people who prefer more balanced treatments. Even if not, as long as like Dave said the several points of view are expressed in a reasonable manner, the discomfort inherent in reading something that doesn't share your view point becomes bearable. Naive? Maybe, but just as television, radio, rock and roll and video games HAVEN'T lead to the moral collapse of humanity as many feared, I don't think this will.

And now I have another reason never to go on Facebook. Damn thing is like some psychopathic Skynet, turning people into zombified clusters of mutual backpatting so we'll be so much more easier to isolate and destroy once it fires all the nuclear missiles.

If you don't hear from me within 24 hours, assume that I have been killed by Mark Zuckerberg's cadre of hitmen.

[/tiredramble]

I am not sure what goes on on other people's facebook pages but on mine we don't really talk about politics. We post about things that are happening in our lives.

I think most of my friends turned that "feature" off.
There were at least 10 of my friends who detailed how to turn it off by posting it in their profile, soon after it was turned on.

I don't know of any other site that I go to that filters things in this way, so I don't really see the concern (other than cookies tracking me, and targeting me with specific ads, which I ignore anyway).

Joe Johnson said:

I think most of my friends turned that "feature" off.
There were at least 10 of my friends who detailed how to turn it off by posting it in their profile, soon after it was turned on.

I don't know of any other site that I go to that filters things in this way, so I don't really see the concern (other than cookies tracking me, and targeting me with specific ads, which I ignore anyway).

Click to expand...

Google does it. If you and I search for the same things, we may get different results based on the kinds of things I've searched for, and the links I've clicked on the search results pages.