For the first seven chapters of The Filter Bubble, we learn about all of the horrible consequences that occur when we are trapped in the bubble.  Over-personalization of the Internet puts us on isolated cyber-islands, where we are denied the information we need to hear.  Rather than becoming a location of serendipitous learning, the web has become a scene that is painted for each one of us, and usually incorrectly.  In chapter 8, Pariser lays out his plan of actions on how to pop this bubble of isolation.  Dividing up the responsibilities between what government, corporations, and individuals should do, he shows us how we can return to a more balanced cyber experience.  Two of these ideas stand out, one being an extremely clever and easy way to solve for the Filter Bubble, and one that is weak and impossible to enforce.

Why do we get trapped in Filter Bubble in the first place?  “Most of us are pretty mouselike in our information habits” (223).  What this means, is that we go to the same three or four websites multiple times a day.  Every time we open the computer, we have the identical routine of visiting the same string of pages.  Also, we rarely add a new page to the routine.  This means it is very easy for web services and data aggregators to zero in on our habits, and therefore deliver information to us that they think we’ll consume.  Driven by advertising revenue, they can form an image of what we think we are and subsequently bombard us with information that they think we want.  Pariser’s solution to this problem is extremely simple.

As individuals, the main way we can lessen the power of the Filter Bubble is to stop being mice. By breaking our little routines, we become impossible to pigeonhole, or become stuck in an image of what Internet companies think we are.  Visiting a large variety of websites about wildly different information expands our Filter Bubbles until they are so large, that we are hardly in an isolation bubble at all.  The reason this is such an effective solution for the Filter Bubble is how easy it is to accomplish.  As we’ll see, some other solutions require complicated government regulation or the voluntary cooperation of a multi-billion dollar corporation.  However, it is extremely easy to quit being a mouse.  All we have to do is read about a basketball game, a mathematical discovery, elections in the Philippines, and who Taylor Swift is dating this week.

Unfortunately, all of Pariser’s solutions are not as strong as “Stop being a mouse” (223).  Although it is relatively simple to have individuals work on breaking out of the Filter Bubble, it is extremely difficult to get big Internet companies to change their policies.  Driven by enormous advertising revenues, companies such as Google and Facebook won’t change just because they should.  This is especially true of one of the solutions that Pariser promotes, that Internet companies should become more transparent, and use the history of newspapers as a model.

Pariser writes, “Google and Facebook and other new media giants could draw inspiration from the history of newspaper ombudsmen” (230).  At a newspaper, an ombudsman answers to challenges of the newspaper’s reporting from the public.  They were put in place in 1970’s in order to boost the credibility of newspapers in the eyes of the public, and create an atmosphere of transparency.  There are many reasons why this is not a legitimate model for Internet companies to follow.  First, Internet companies are not facing any loss of business because of transparency issues.  In general, everything from Google News is relatively trusted, and Google’s profits are strong and consistent.  Next, is the manner in which the public interacts with digital media.  In the past, newspapers told everyone the news.  There was no interaction, or if there was questioning, it could not be corrected until days later.  Today on the web, we interact with our news.  We can comment on a questionable Yahoo News story, or choose not to share a friend’s news story on Facebook.

In general, it is up to us to solve for the Filter Bubble.  Although Pariser calls for corporate and government actions, it is our personal responsibility to not get caught up in a Filter Bubble.  No corporation is going to voluntarily change its policies until the revenues begin to dry up.  Instead, we should force them to not pigeonhole us, all while consuming diverse news at the same time.

Work Cited

Pariser, Eli.  The Filter Bubble: How the New Personalized Web is Changing What we Read and How we Think.  New York: Penguin Group, 2011.  Print.