Saturday, June 4, 2011

Understanding the Google Filter Bubble


(image is a screenshot from eli's ted talk ppt. Link to it below)


According to Eli Parisers great TED talk on filter bubbles, Googl'es personalization algorithm has created a myopic perspective for each one of us, effectively creating a censorship bubble ( censorship because what info you get is decided by google, without any transparency to you. Also you are not immediately presented choices).

So how do they do it, how does Google strive to understand each one of us, so it can serve us what we like (and thus filter out everything else that maybe we might not like but is still good for us to see or know ? ) , apparently they tune their search results along 57 signals for each user. I wonder what they are ?

Fortunately i found some smart thinking on the subject by Rene Pickhardt, a Ph.D "WebScience" student. Check out his smart guess on what the 57 signals are:

http://www.rene-pickhardt.de/google-uses-57-signals-to-filter/
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Go check it out

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