Sinister Filter Bubble Excludes Conservatives

[marshabar1]

Eli Pariser was looking at Facebook one day when he noticed something peculiar. On his news feed, where he usually enjoyed reading through his friends' comments and links, there was something missing. "I've always gone out of my way to meet conservatives," says Pariser, a liberal tech entrepreneur from New York. "So I was kind of surprised when I noticed that the conservatives had disappeared from my Facebook feed."

Facebook had quietly scrubbed the feed clean of anything Right-wing--nothing Republican, nothing anti-Obama, was getting through. So what was going on?

"It turns out," says Pariser, "that Facebook was looking at which links I clicked on. And it noticed that I was clicking more on my liberal friends' links than on my conservative friends' links. And without consulting me about it, it had edited them out. They disappeared."

In other words, Facebook decided that Pariser's conservative friends weren't relevant. It didn't matter that he liked to hear their point of view occasionally; because he clicked on their links less frequently, they had been exiled from his online world.

In his new book, it is this world that Eli Pariser names the "filter bubble": a place where a hidden code decides what you can and can't see.

Pariser speaks matter-of-factly about this sinister phenomenon. "There's a shift in how information is flowing online," he told the TED conference in California in May. "It's invisible. And it if we don't pay attention to it, it could be a real problem."

blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/willheaven/100093155/the-filter-bubble-is-a-sinister-phenomenon-but-eli-parisers-alternative-sounds-even-worse/

ETA by Virgil: Fixed the character encoding to make the article readable. Marsha, you're going to have to figure out what's wrong with your machine.

[chiver78]

that's really stretching for spin.

from Facebook's own pages:
How does News Feed determine which content is most interesting?
The News Feed algorithm bases this on a few factors: how many friends are commenting on a certain piece of content, who posted the content, and what type of content it is (e.g. photo, video, or status update).

if that means that because Eli clicks more on his liberal friends' pages, FB determines that he's more interested in them, of course he's not going to see as much of the other people. if he's that interested in those other people, perhaps he ought to share the wealth in where he chooses to click.

it's not so sinister now, is it?

[Virgil Showlion]

The author's point is that algorithms are, in a sense, telling us what to think.

His solution is that we perhaps need humans as "related content" filters.

[mmhmm]

Nooo! Chiver, you don't understand! FaceBook is highly prejudiced against conservatives! They're out to get 'em! They've infiltrated the News Feed and corrupted it! (Buy stock in tin foil!)

[floodofsantorum]

Jun 21, 2011 19:36:56 GMT -5 Virgil Showlion said:

The author's point is that algorithms are, in a sense, telling us what to think.

His solution is that we perhaps need humans as "related content" filters.

Censorship?

[mmhmm]

Problem there, Virgil, is humans demand salaries. Algorithms don't.

[chiver78]

haha, right?

Virgil, I agree that it would absolutely add value to have humans making the last call on filtering, but there's no way that would ever happen with the volume of traffic FB gets. as I said in my reply - if it's so interesting to Eli, maybe he ought to balance out his clicks.

[marshabar1]

I use a stinkin' Macintosh, there's NOTHING the matter with my machine. ;D

[floodofsantorum]

I agree that it would absolutely add value to have humans making the last call on filtering

I absolutely disagree. If humans were behind this, there could be a reasonable argument that it was a case of political bias.

[marshabar1]

Amazon algorithm seems to get it right in the suggestion department.

[cme1201]

Jun 21, 2011 19:42:40 GMT -5 @marshabar1 said:

I use a stinkin' Macintosh, there's NOTHING the matter with my machine. ;D

I think we found the problem! ;D

[Deleted]

I don't see what the big deal is. From what I have seen on these boards Liberals & Conservatives really can't communicate anyway. They just don't have any common ground.

[floodofsantorum]

True. Which is why I laugh every time I read yet another article that Americans are tried of the bickering ... and want bipartisanship.

[chiver78]

Jun 21, 2011 19:46:23 GMT -5 @marshabar1 said:

Amazon algorhythm seems to get it right in the suggestion department.

only because nobody comes back to write a book about how Amazon's algorithm blocked them from getting suggestions on Pepsi, when they were really looking for Coke the whole time.

[ed1066]

Your endless new nicks are getting more and more disgusting, Chess...is your son reading this?