
Online Personalization Creates Echo Chamber to Affirm Biases - zoowar
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/29/technology/29stream.html
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zoowar
An alternate perspective is available at
[http://glinden.blogspot.com/2011/05/eli-pariser-is-
wrong.htm...](http://glinden.blogspot.com/2011/05/eli-pariser-is-wrong.html)

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aristus
I'm not convinced of this rebuttal. The problem is that these systems tend
only to improve serendipity _within the comfort zone_. Greg's One True
Scotsman argument that a "well-designed" system would of course be better is
not convincing either.

Naive systems optimize for things you already like, or variations on things
you already like. The system doesn't need to present a broad array of ideas.
Presenting you with something that causes a strong negative reaction is
considered a bad thing.

Newspapers have the same problem to a lesser degree: I know folk who read the
Weekly Standard and who wouldn't touch the NYT with a bargepole, and vice
versa.

We just have many more, smaller echo chambers. People will always have to make
the conscious effort to give strange views a fair hearing.

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phaedon
"[Pariser] went out of his way to “friend” people with conservative politics.
When he didn’t click on their updates as often as those of his like-minded
contacts, he says, the system dropped the outliers from his news feed."

There's the rub. The Internet, among other things, has created a flood of data
into people's lives. Filtering is essential. Pariser's built-in mental filter
took over. I understand the premise of what's being said here. But it's more
complicated than this. If an article/story/data in general is uninteresting or
repellent enough to someone that it's ignored, did it really help that it was
on the page briefly as it's skimmed past?

I think the problem is that it _automatically_ dropped things from his feed.
It might be good to offer a way to turn filtering off entirely and leave it up
to the person. I can't imagine anyone would really want this for long, though.

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danielharan
Recommendation engines tend to suggest more variety than what your friends
would. The whole argument rests upon silly anti-tech fears.

The vast majority of people get more political diversity in their Amazon
recommendations than the NYT can produce.

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da_dude4242
I think a big problem here is the scaling of online communities(there was a
great article out on this a couple years ago). As homogeneous online
communities grow their perceived quality goes down in part due to relatively
heterogeneous members disrupting the signal to noise ratio. Sites like
facebook(and I assume even reddit) get around this scaling problem by
partitioning members off into homogeneous sets. This problem is related to the
fact that there is a dialogue happening. Dialogues within heterogeneous
populations degrades into culture war. So partition the user base via filters,
create structure that mediates the dialogue/interaction, or create niche
communities tailored to a homogeneous community.

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jcr
The old article you mention might be "A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy" by Clay
Shirky?

<http://shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html>

~~~
da_dude4242
That's the one, thanks.

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wslh
There are not black & white opinions.

The issue is that the goal recommendation systems in commercial sites is
[generally] profits. So, Netflix will not risk to recommend a film outside
some confidence level.

In my experience, closer [taste] friends works better than recommendation
systems, since they can see outside the typical statistics.

~~~
zoowar
With friends, we learn to accept/reject their recommendations based on our
experience with their recommendations in the area they are recommending. We
filter the filters.

~~~
gte910h
Yeah, I often find myself intentionally stopping this occasionally to allow
growth into areas that I don't currently like, but could. This includes odd
foods, hobbies, activities, etc.

Usually try to give it 4-5 "goes" at the novel activity to determine if
they're good at picking out things that at first aren't interesting.

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zoowar
You can watch the TED video here:
[http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/eli_pariser_beware_online_...](http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_bubbles.html)

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gojomo
This has been a fear since the earliest days of online communities. I don't
think actual behavior has confirmed that it occurs more often online than
elsewhere; if it did, Pariser would have more hard data (rather than just-so
anecdotes and hand-wringing about potential-risks) by this time.

People who want to be insulated could always achieve it; however people also
like novelty and (to a certain extent) challenges to their own views. (People
even enjoy being outraged; I suspect right-wing-radio has as many listeners
thinking 'ohmygod what an idiot' as 'finally someone who tells it like it
is'.)

Online forums make it cheaper, easier, and even socially safer to
incrementally explore alternative viewpoints without precommitting, via a
public show of group-loyalty, to a standard school of thought.

I suspect the net effect is strongly in the direction of more awareness and
respect for a wide variety of viewpoints, despite the sturm and drang of
certain flamefests and partisan outlets. (And even despite the success of
Pariser's own organization MoveOn, and its siblings across the political
spectrum, with simpleminded outrage-driven us-vs-them fundraising campaigns.)

However, I'd like to see data or a well-designed experiment; none of the
coverage of Pariser's book has yet suggested a qualitatively-rigorous case is
made within.

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georgieporgie
On a somewhat related note, I was looking at health insurance the other day.
Wanting to make sure I remembered the terms correctly, I Googled, "how do
health insurance deductibles work". By the time I typed the word 'insurance'
my question was #1 in the suggestions pop-up. I found this strangely
reassuring.

Later, I realized that it may well be at the top solely because I searched on
the same exact term the last time that I was looking at health insurance, and
Google remembered.

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bluekeybox
Surprise, surprise... The largest of traditional newspapers has a problem with
one of the biggest drivers behind online media: that you can finally choose
what you read.

