The Filter Bubble

We’re not really surfing the web any more  but rather, we’re lying on the shore and waiting for the right websites to wash over us. The Internet and websites such as Google, Facebook, and Youtube, tailor the content we see to the information that these sites gather from our online activity. This personalized practice creates what’s called the “filter bubble”

What is a “Filter Bubble”?

The term filter bubble was invented by Internet activist Eli Pariser, and describes the way  websites use algorithms to select what users might want to see based on browser history and data. Some say that these personalized filters create invisible divides between web users and enclose people in bubbles of their own beliefs, opinions, and expectations.

We’re used to thinking of the Internet like an enormous library, with services like Google providing a universal map. But that’s no longer really the case. Sites from Google and Facebook to Yahoo News and the New York Times are now increasingly personalized – based on your web history, they filter information to show you the stuff they think you want to see. That can be very different from what everyone else sees – or from what we need to see.

Your filter bubble is this unique, personal universe of information created just for you by this array of personalizing filters. It’s invisible and it’s becoming more and more difficult to escape.

What is the Internet hiding from me?

As Google engineer Jonathan McPhie explained to me, it’s different for every person – and in fact, even Google doesn’t totally know how it plays out on an individual level. At an aggregate level, they can see that people are clicking more. But they can’t predict how each individual’s information environment is altered.

In general, the things that are most likely to get edited out are the things you’re least likely to click on. Sometimes, this can be a real service – if you never read articles about sports, why should a newspaper put a football story on your front page? But apply the same logic to, say, stories about foreign policy, and a problem starts to emerge. Some things, like homelessness or genocide, aren’t highly clickable but are highly important.

The Filter Bubble does one of the most important things a book CAN do — it sounds a warning about a major problem that has, untill now, been mostly invisible. But Pariser doesn’t just tell us how giants like Google and Facebook are limiting the information we see. He also explains, in clear, energetic prose, how the personalization of the Internet is affecting our relationships, our identities, our creativity and our democracy.

Click here to order a copy of The Fitler Bubble, its well worth a read..