A friend of mine shared this TED talk with me today about the rise of “filter bubbles”, which is a more accurate way to describe how Google, Facebook and other companies use your so-called preferences to filter and restrict the information you encounter, before you even encounter it. They are basically constructing an elegant, invisible echo chamber, ensuring that if you don’t want to encounter opposing viewpoints or unpleasant ideas, you don’t have to. Eli Pariser discusses why this is a serious problem (I also wrote about this in What Disturbs Me Most About Facebook) and articulates the need for transparency and a sense of civic duty among companies that control our access to so much information.
I don’t know which is more terrifying: that Facebook and Google understand the deep, deep implications of this filtering and do it anyway, or that they’re clueless to the potential harm. I’ll leave you with two chilling quotes from our supposedly visionary leaders:
“A squirrel dying in front of your house may be more relevant to your interests right now than people dying in Africa”
~Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook
“It will be very hard for people to watch or consume something that has not in some sense been tailored for them.”
~Eric Schmidt, Google
Get fresh posts delivered straight to your inbox.
Great post! I never knew how dramatically a search engine could act until I saw this TED talk. Thanks for sharing!
Pingback: WordCast Conversations 23: Robin Cangie, The Future of Social Web Marketing | | WordCast Conversations
Pingback: Robin Cangie | A Challenge to Facebook: Become Valuable — Robin Cangie
Pingback: SERPs personalizzate. Google non torna indietro | Seo Marketing News - Primaposizione.it