HW #3

Strongest / Weakest Ideas

In this modern information age, relying on technology has become a second nature to most of us. Leaving our houses with a sense of security in having Google maps on our phones, constantly having phone cameras ready to capture fascinating sights, Facebook and Twitter apps always prepared for a new status update from us and many more similar actions are now a part of our everyday life. As the time goes on and reliance on the internet gains more and more importance, we can’t help but neglect its’ main problem: the filtered search results falsely identifying our personalities and creating inaccurate snapshots of who we are and what we want. In the final chapter of The Filter Bubble, Eli Pariser summarizes the problems with privacy on the internet and discusses several solutions and actions people can take to avoid becoming “bubbled in.”

The strongest point Pariser made about fighting the filtering process was when he addressed corporations urging engineers to “solve for serendipity by designing filtering systems.” I completely agree with this stand because users of the internet are simply consumers, they purchase the product and take it as it is, reaping the benefits of what it offers. Users can’t necessarily identify the hidden issues within the product and consequently definitely cannot combat them. In the case of search engines specifically, masterminds behind the algorithms have the power to alter the way we search by blurring the lines of this “bubble” we enter when viewing personalized results. Pariser admits that having less personalization in our results might decrease the popularity of search engines because “personalization system with an element of randomness will (by definition) get fewer clicks.” As this may be true, times are constantly changing and what we rely on today may be replaced by the newest trend in researching and technology. Currently, the problems with filtered results are less known and don’t yet concern many users, but as Pariser explained with an example of increased attractiveness of newspapers, the way people search is bound to change. In my opinion, this idea is particularly strong because it is human nature to follow trends and if corporations and engineers make alterations to researching processes, the public is bound to follow and enjoy search results and advertisements with much more diversity.

The weakest point made by Pariser has to do with personally breaking out of our habits. As previously mentioned, I believe it is human nature to follow trends. There are top engineers and leaders in IT for different corporations that hold the key to less personalization and decreased bias in what we view on the web. Consumers alone have minimal power over broadening their interests when they are constantly pressured with what the web believes they want to see. Pariser states that “just by stretching your interests in new directions, you give the personalizing code more breadth to work with.” I completely agree with this statement; however it needs to be taken into consideration that habits aren’t easily broken and we can’t control ourselves as effortlessly. The search results we use and the ads we view aren’t there by choice and searching for multiple topics just to cause a sort of “confusion” to the algorithm is almost impossible. For my part, I have experienced personalized ads based on a shoe shopping website I visited a very long time ago. Although, I have been to many other websites since then, ads based on that one specific search continue showing up on the sides of my browser and there is no way for me to control that aspect of my internet. Pariser does suggest regularly deleting cookies, but I believe there needs to be a much more concrete solution to this filtering problem than such a simple action, which only takes care of a small part of this huge problem.