I don’t believe that  either Facebook or Google does a better job at understanding who I am. One reason I believe this is derived from the purpose of the two sites. I use Facebook solely to illustrate my  personal and social side. While I use google for social, academic, personal, and business purposes. On my facebook page you can see pictures of where I spent my vacation, one can see who I am friends with or what music I like to listen to. One can also figure out my politcal affiliations and my religious views, but they would still be skimming the surface. Facebook cannot understand the real me because it only knows what information I choose to give it. I can still be hiding what I don’t want people to know.

Although Google has access to a much greater amount of information than facebook, it still is often misconstrued.  Although Google can track the websites that I visit via the search engines it doesn’t get a much more in depth understanding of who I am because I may search something that I am not necessarily interested. For example, research for a science project. Someone else can also use my computer and search things that I am not interested in.

I think both Facebook and Google do an incomplete job. “Both are pretty poor representations of who we are, in part because there is no one set of data that describess who we are. Information about our property, our professions, our purchases, our financesk and our medical history does not tell the whole story.” (115)

I think Facebook does a better job demonstrating who we truly are, simply because of the fact that its platform is based on social networking. Through Facebook, a person’s identity is captured in several ways, whether it’s by manually entering your personal information, or following people that you communicate with, or following which ads you click on. Furthermore, Facebook has numerous features which allow its users to express their interest in hobbies, activities etc.  In the very beginning of chapter 4, Pariser talks about how well Facebook captures a person’s identity, in which he mentions that “you have one identity, it’s your Facebook identity, and it colors your experience everywhere you go.” He talks about hoe Facebook wants to be the single platform in which every other website and service acquires your personal and social data.

This differs from Google in that it relies heavily on clickstream and algorithmic signals, making it a little less personal than Facebook. To an extent, I believe that Google controls your identity, whereas Facebook allows you to demonstrate your own identity.

Discuss whether Facebook or Google does a better job of understanding who you are.

I think Facebook and Google, both have the same capacity in understanding who I am. The only difference is the sort of information I provide the two medias that allows them to have an advantage over the other. Facebook, unfortunately, has become a ‘face’ of me to reach out to my friends, and families, and since most of the communication is happening among them, I give facebook real, solid information about myself. This is because, my friends, families and other people I care about stay in touch with me through this medium. However, with Google, the information I provide is very general.

For instance, I have two cats in my house. And facebook knows it, because I post and send pictures about them to my friends and families all the time. They even know the names of my cats, age, gender, breed, you name it. And if I am looking to buy a cat food, I will go on google and do some research on the best food for my cats. After the purchase, if I really like the product, I am most likely to go on facebook, and ‘Like’ the brand on its page. Google knew that I was looking for to buy some cat food, however facebook knows what product I bought. To boil it down, I think facebook does a better job of understanding me, only because I provide them with specific information about myself. This proves and verifies the fact that Facebook knows me well only because, “of the bits of data we (i) give off, as we (I) go about our (my) lives (life)” (pg.155).

Google and Facebook are both different in many ways. At the same time they are both similar in various ways as well. Both feel as if they have a clear description of who we are. Personally I agree with what Pariser stated in the “Filter Bubble”;  “Both are pretty poor representations of who we are, in part because there is no set of data that describes who we are…” (p115). Pariser is basically saying that, both Google and Facebook are taking what we enter in our search history or Facebook bio, as not being substantial enough.

If I were to choose who I feel represents and knows more about me, I would side with Google. Other than the advertisements Google implements in each and every search, I feel there actual searches themselves are very accurate. For example, if I were to enter my name, Daniel Westerband in to a Google search, a whole bunch of websites containing information about me come up in the search. Also, personal information I wouldn’t expect to find would appear in my search. That is why I feel Google captures who I am more as a person, than Facebook since its somewhat “connected” to various sites, such as social media platforms. In essence, Google allows others not only myself to obtain information about who I am, what I like to eat, where I live, where I like to visit.

Facebook as Pariser mentions, “is more aspirational: Facebook takes you more at your word, presenting you as you’d like to be seen by others.” (p115). I feel Pariser was right on with that statement. Facebook knows me as a user of their social media platform. They don’t know me personally. Your personal Facebook profile contains a whole bunch of information in which you personally set up yourself. This information may not be factual. The information you put on Facebook could be used to alter the way others portray you. For example, the “likes” in which you select on your Facebook bio, could be chosen to maybe impress someone, maybe a girl/boy you have interest in, or a company who is looking to hire you for a job.

Based on the two I feel Google has more of a clear cut understanding of who I am. The searches we make and what we click to obtain information is made unconsciously. People simply enter a search without being aren’t aware of the information Google takes from our searches; better yet internet browsers themselves. As Pariser mentions on p116 of the “Filter Bubble”, Zuckerberg states that we have one true identity. This obviously is not true. As stated before, everything we enter on to Facebook is not accurate. Facebook gives us the ability to have a little more control of what is put out there for the world to see.

Facebook and Google are two mainstream search tools that utilizes personalization in their web domain to extract information out of their users.  I believe that Google has a better understanding of who individuals really are because the way that they gather information on their customers are more relevant to the persons exact needs. Through the amount of clicks and searches that an individual does on Google, Google can process all of that information into a source of advertising. The information built on the your particular interests when you are asked to put your specific information into their database, which comes from creating an account, along with all of your searches, check-ins, and YouTube searches gives them a great depiction of who you as an individual may be. The downside as Eli Pariser mentioned in his book, Filter Bubble, is that no person should be characterized by what they search for on the web. Pariser knows that, we should not be given personalized information that circles around what we search up because this hinders the actual purpose of the world-wide web.

Eli Pariser also mentions that the personalization that Facebook presents an individual as they would like to be seen rather than for the person the are. The information that Facebook receives  cannot really be 100% correct about an individual. I agree with Pariser in the sense that Facebook tries to imitate or pre-direct a person’s personality by forcing them to give information that might or might not be true. For instance, kids might go on Facebook and like every page that he has seen just because Facebook brought it up to their interest.

In chapter four Eli Pariser talks about the Google self and the Facebook self. The Google self seems to be more of an in-depth look of who you are privately as opposed to the Facebook self which is more of who you are in relation to others. You can argue that who you are in the privacy of your own home is who you truly are, but you can also argue that your behavior and what you choose to show to others is who you truly are. It’s all about how you see and define identity.

I think neither the Google self or the Facebook self on their own can encompass who you are because your identity is a mixture of your personal life and your social life. We all wear different faces depending on the situation we’re in as Pariser mentions.

        Facebook does a better job of understanding who you are because activities on Facebook are more personalized than Google. While Google focuses your search history to figure out who you are, Facebook uses your personalized posts, interaction with friends and many other aspects. It’s hard to know personalities or characteristics of strangers just by looking at their Google search history but by looking at his/her Facebook you can get a basic sense of what these strangers are like. Facebook personalizing would have more risks of privacy invasion because they use personal data, but it has better understanding and identifying one’s character; people tend to reveal more of their personal lives on Facebook rather than on Google and Facebook used those data for personalizing its users.

     ” Just because you’ve only ever seen white swans doesn’t mean all swans are white. What you have to look for is black swan, the counterexample that proves the theory wrong. ” As this quote says,  Facebook has a greater chance to lead people to confirmation bias because they display advertising  only based on users’ personal preferences. Facebook does a better job of personalizing and understanding individuals, but it might fail to deliver transparent and unbiased information to its users.

Google and Facebook are two big players in their quest for information. While both are very popular, only one can be crown the king of mining and analyzing data. While Facebook provides you with ads that may be relevant to you, in my experience they miss the mark almost 75% of the time. I hardly receive ads that relate to my interests, and most of the time they are of ads about food. Ads for restaurants can be targeted to anyone, what Facebook is lacking are ads that target just me as an individual. Google on the other hand takes the similar approach of trying to show me ads that are relevant to me, but for Google, they seem to have a much better understanding of who I am. I have a routine in the morning when I wake up and I visit the same sites on a daily basis. This is how Google begins to track my patterns of search behavior. For example when I search “Nexus 7” into Google Search, the ads that are displayed on the right hand side shows ads of similar deals from retailers and online stores. Google is able to personalize my ads because they know that I usually spend some time researching these products on Google. So if I am looking up specifications for an android tablet then I will usually see ads for deals for these devices.

Google knows me as a user of their product, but Facebook seems to be trying to “guess” who I am.  Its like with a first date, if you had a dinner date with Facebook (figuratively), you figured out there were things you both liked, however you didn’t feel as though you were clicking as well as with your previous date with Google. Google seemed to take you off your feet when you found out Google can predict what activities you enjoyed. Facebook on the other hand, had to ask you 20 questions to get that one specific answer. “The one-identity problem isn’t a fundamental flaw, It’s more of a bug: Because Zuckerberg thinks you have one identity and you don’t, Facebook will do a worse job of personalizing your information environment.” – And this is somewhat true, when we are on Facebook our experience are limited to the activities of our friends in relation to us. So while its great that you can like certain pages, and posts on your news feed, it doesn’t tell much of a story. But Google can analyze you as though you had multiple personalities. Google can figure out that you love to teach, or that you love to read poetry, and that you also love to skydive and snowboard. With Facebook there is a beginning and an end, with Google, there is a beginning, a middle, and an end. In the end Google is victorious when it comes to extracting our information in order for our experience to be more personalized.

Who knows you better, or at least thinks they have a better understanding of who you are, Google or Facebook? Complicated question to answer to since both do a different job of trailing our moves. Facebook knows us by our profiles, which include, friends, pictures, private information, and of course our interests. Google on the other hand only knows us by  what we search for, and what kind of news we are interested in. There may be no comparison between Google’s and Facebook’s personalization.

According to Facebook’s founder Zuckerberg  ” you have one identity.” Also in the book it states that ” you have one identity, it’s your Facebook identity, and it’s colors your experience everywhere you go.” According to Google “google news, and google’s ads determine the Google’s theory of you.”  Both statements offend me because we as individuals are so different, and unique, we have a different variety of personalities, mood swings, pleasures, each of us has a past that nether Facebook or Google knows. They can not base their theory of us just because we like to listen to a certain type of music, or watch particularly news that deal with science. I feel like both aren’t really trying to figure us out, but do the same thing our society does to everyone and that is just ” stereotype.”

Personally I agree with what it says in the book ” The Google self and the Facebook self, in other words, are pretty different people. There’s a big difference between ” you are what you click” and ” you are what you share.”” What they forgot to mention, and I personally think is the basic of our computerized generation is that we are ” our real selves vs our online selves ”

I don’t think an entire personality (a full complex identity) can be boxed into searched categories. Whether it is the most efficient search engine on the web or the best search tool on a social networking website, neither one can determine ‘who you are’. It can simply narrow down some of the things you are interested in at this specific time. A more appropriate term for characterization of an individual through search engines would be a “theory of you,” as mentioned in Chapter 4.

However, comparing Facebook and Google as tools to determine your personality, Google would definetely take the cake. As discussed in the chapter, people have tendancies to filter out what they share on Facebook to appear a certain way to others. With Google search, there is a bigger illusion of privacy and nobody is holding back. The engine stores a history of everything ranging from medical issues to celebrity crushes. Google browsing history remembers exactly what you like, what you hate, what your friends might like (if they searched through your browser), what your family members might prefer, etc.

With that said, I believe Facebook advertisements have higher potential of reaching the right audiences based on personal preferences and bringing potential clients/customers to the company being advertized. Neither one of these search engines lives up to the principle of “an entirely private context.” Just the mere idea of a search engine forming an opinion on who you are and what you prefer to see and buy promotes anything but privacy.

What is a more accurate image of your identity?  Is it one that you can create, to convey your ideal-self to the world?  Or is it your private self, the one who searches for an array of topics on the web under a cloak of privacy?  Facebook creates its identity of you through what you share and what you like.  If Facebook see’s you like The Terminator and The Predator, its image of you is one that likes action movies.  On the other hand, Google uses click signals to create an identity of its users.  These private interactions aggregate into a huge mass of data that Google can make inferences about your identity on.  This mass of data is much more accurate at capturing who you are, and there are many reasons why.

Eli Pariser writes, “Facebook’s share-based self is more aspirational: Facebook takes you more at your word, presenting you as you’d like to be seen by others.”  This is important for two reasons.  First, by using a share-based method of creating identity, a conscious user can avoid having a part of their true identity becoming part of their online identity by not Liking or Sharing it.  This method also has a drawback for Facebook.  Since the goal of creating an online identity is to receive personalized advertising, this ideal-self identity could prevent personalized ad’s from reaching you.  For example, if you’re a guy who doesn’t want his friends to know which television shows are his guilty pleasures, he simply does not have to like them on Facebook.  However, Facebook’s advertising clients lose out on a customer.

So how is Google’s, share–based method more accurate at creating an identity of its user?  With Google, the user does not have to Like or Share a topic to indicate interest in it.  What this means is that everything the user searches for get added into an enormous database of personal information.  Google users search for things that they don’t Like on Facebook all of the time.  This leads to another important reason Google’s identity creation is more effective, privacy.  Pariser writes, “These clicks often happen in an entirely private context.”  To use our previous example, Google would know that our male user was a fan of reality television, because privately, he could have searched for an episode recap or information on a character.  The world does not see every Google search a user makes, and that is what makes it a more powerful method for creating an identity.

The truth about Facebook and Google is that they are both relatively inefficient at creating identities of users.  Pariser writes about the “uncanny valley,” which is situation where something appears to be lifelike but is not.  This characterizes our online identities, and they creep us out.  Another error that Facebook and Google make is they believe in the “Fundamental Attribution Error,” or the fact that we only have one identity.  The truth is that humans are fluid, our identity changes from situation to situation (family dinner vs. out with friends), and over time as well.  That being said, Google is the better tool for creating identities of the users because they can search for anything without having to consider their ideal-self.

Who knows me better, Google or Facebook….well to think that a website knows me personally is a bit of a creepy thought. Maybe its too much ‘iRobot’ thoughts in my head but technology is becoming a tad overwhelming. If i had to chose which site knows me better I think I would have to say Facebook. Though I’m not happy with the fact that FB assumes me to have one identity for all my friends it has a majority-correct assumption on majority of things.

This is probably because when I access Facebook its only me and they see what it is I alone do in my searches, friend requests, events, likes etc. Unlike Google which even though my email is logged in my sister, my mother, my friends constantly ask me to do searches for them and this probably throws in confounding variables of my identity to Google.

This still upsets me because both the social media site and the search engine think of me as a person who has specific interests and don’t allow me to see what else there might be, i am not an ‘island’ and if i was to look at what they see i would hope they “zoom out” and see a bigger picture when it comes to looking at personalization. Pariser is right that the internet skews your identity and doesn’t really see the big picture of your individuality rather than just your identity to a group.

“You say that people should have one identity…. But I behave a different way around my family than I do around my colleagues.” was what David Kirkpatrick said to Mark Zuckerberg in “The Filter Bubble” by Eli Pariser. I think David made a great point that made my decision clear when it comes to Google vs. Facebook. I think that Google knows my true identity and what type of person I am over Facebook. Personally, I don’t use Facebook but if I did I would be careful with what I would upload and post. On Facebook  people are friends with family members, friends, potential employers, and future friends. If this variety of people were going to watch my every move I’d make sure to sensor and be careful of what exactly I want displayed for others to find out about me. However, on Google, I’m only conducting searches of websites I like to browse through or shop at. Google knows what I really want to see because I don’t filter my thoughts and tell it exactly what I’m interested to look at. I think if someone knows others are watching, he would be more careful with what they do for the world to see.