What is Reddit's opinion of The Filter Bubble: How the New Personalized Web Is Changing What We Read and How We Think?

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

>What you see when you search "Ice cream" is different from what I see, or what the person next to you on the subway sees, or even what you'll see an hour from now.

I read about this years ago in, "The Filter Bubble" - and except this part, >even what you'll see an hour from now

the book was spot on. And catering to our biases has led us, culturally, to more bias.

This has not, and will continue to not be, a GoodThing™.

[edit - fixing quote spacing]

Yep. It also contributes to the vicious cycle of partisan politics. The Internet has made it so easy to find people with similar views, it leads to folks becoming even more emotionally invested in those beliefs, to the point where it gets increasingly difficult to consider other points of view. That's why you and Grandma will laugh at each other WAY more than you'll consider each other's points. On top of the fact that we're all using memes to make fun of each other, you're already conditioned to support other folks who agree with you.

By the way, it's not just social media and human nature causing the problem. Google is making it worse too. Consider reading up on the concept of a filter bubble, and if it strikes your fancy, I just started reading a book I'm recommending to a lot of people called The Filter Bubble: How the New Personalized Web Is Changing What We Read and How We Think. Basically, when Google, Amazon, and other sites try to tailor search results and ads to what they already know you like and agree with, you become even less likely to be introduced to viewpoints outside of our own.

We can talk all day long about how partisan and segregated we are in today's global society, but in reality, it's the things that connect us that are feeding the problem.

They're likely referring to what's known as a "filter bubble," which is the name given by the author of this book to the phenomenon of web algorithms serving people more and more of the type of content that they appear to prefer, which leads to an increase in confirmation bias-influenced thinking and a decrease in critical thinking. This explains the concept and its effects pretty well: https://fs.blog/filter-bubbles/

It's also come to be used to describe the tendency for most people to spend most of their time around people who are similar to themselves in may aspects such as age, education, interests, ethnicity, income, religious beliefs and political inclinations That produces a distorted sense of what's "normal" and what "most people" think, believe or want. I grew up in a small city in the South but now live in DC, so I saw this play out to the extreme during the 2016 elections. The people who I hang around with here were completely sure that Clinton would win. Maybe not by a landslide but they had no doubt that she was going to be elected. Looking at Facebook posts by people who I knew from that small Southern city was the complete opposite, so I wasn't nearly so sure. My guess was that Clinton would win but only juuuust barely. I wasn't that surprised by the election results. The people I hang out with here, however, were truly shocked and devastated by the outcome. All of the polling, punditry, podcasts, news and information they were consuming, the conversations they were having with their friends, coworkers, neighbors and partners had them completely convinced that we were about to have a second President Clinton. It's just a good reminder to be wary of people who might have a financial interest in telling you what you want to hear

The Filter Bubble

Yep, Eli called it years ago.

I'm from California and I see what you're saying, with people equating Trump to Hitler and things like that, which I personally think is insulting for people who were actually affected by the Holocaust and things like that. I've literally heard some people say that Trump was going to put gays and immigrants into internment camps once he was elected, which is possibly the stupidest thing I've ever heard.

I think Facebook is purposely designed to be an echo-chamber, so that it guarantees people stay on there longer. The more you see people that agree with your views, the more likely you are to use their platform, the more you use their platform the more Facebook learns about your likes and dislikes and the better they can show you things that you like and remove things you dislike, and the cycle continues Here are some interesting sources that talk about how social media acts as an echo chamber of sorts:?

https://www.amazon.com/Filter-Bubble-Personalized-Changing-Think/dp/0143121235

http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/07/24/486941582/the-reason-your-feed-became-an-echo-chamber-and-what-to-do-about-it

?

The Filter Bubble - good read on this...

I'll throw out The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding from You (related Wikipedia article), which discusses splinterization of the Internet driven by innocent personalization algorithms. Regardless of what position you take on that particular problem, I think it's representative of the sort of non-technical social issue that will increasingly come up in the software field.

A more technical book I've always liked is The Zen of Assembly Language by Michael Abrash. Michael Abrash is one of the old brilliant iD guys, bouncing around all over the place and now at (ugh) Facebook working on the Oculus Rift. The technical parts of the book were hilariously outdated when it came out, focusing on 8086 assembler when the 80486 was already widely available. It's still an excellent read for approaching optimizing low level performance, as well as being a great work by a very good technical writer. You should be able to readily find PDF copies on the internet.

I don't understand the argument. You're keen that I'm being delivered personalised results, but insist that I am the only person in the world who aren't given identical results to you. And that's somehow related to the religion of the original creators of the content people are linking to.

“Differently from the rest of the world” is what keeps me from walking away. I shall retire from the conversation with these links. To people who live in the same world as I do. Where people get different results, based on where they are, what tracking software they allow, what language they've set their browser to, what OS they're using and what the search engine / ISP want them to see.

• TED talk
• Mandatory wiki-link
• Book: DE, ES, FR, IN, IT, UK, USA
• MIT

Oh! Found it via an old bookmark. The Filter Bubble.

https://www.amazon.com/Filter-Bubble-Personalized-Changing-Think/dp/0143121235

Thanks!

You are so far off the mark. The one guy makes a sarcastic/humorous comment referencing a KNOWN Concept. (not my theory) That being - filter bubble.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Filter-Bubble-Personalized-Changing/dp/0143121235

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filter_bubble

http://www.thefilterbubble.com/

If you are aware of something it is in your brain. The filter bubble works on your browsing habits. You cant telepathically let the internet "know" anything. Although I think it might know that you are in fact an idiot. I know your an idiot and not a troll because a troll at least has a plausible argument. Yours are just full retard. CNN does not give a shit about your meta data when they render YOUR front page story unless you are using a logged in profile and they allow you to set preferences. The ads are what will change.

I never intimated that I was smarter, only that you are dumber and you do not have valid questions, your just misunderstanding. You probably are lazy though.

FILTER BUBBLE people...

Unless that browser was logged out of Google AND all the cache and ALL the history was cleared this is not necessarily happening to everyone. I just did the search and got all candidates and I am a Trump supporter.

Filter bubble is simple to understand. If a huge baseball fan googles "red socks" what he will get is results for the baseball team.

If Santa Clause googled "Red Socks" he is going to get results for red socks for his feet.

Google does this intentionally in order to be able to sell better targeted advertizing.

This is a problem because diversity is very important for progress. Without being exposed to new or information that you may not like you are given less chance to expand your knowledge.

Great book on this topic is

The Filter Bubble: How the New Personalized Web Is Changing What We Read and How We Think