The Internet Filter Bubble
Online services such as Google and Facebook are our friends, and clever targeting of search results is meant to make our online lives easier. But does it come at a cost?
Your Internet is being filtered!
Campaigner Eli Pariser talked passionately in a TED.com conference in February 2011, about the dangers of the filters used by the likes of Facebook and Google, and how our online searches may be becoming blinkered. We'd urge all Internet users to watch the following 9 minute talk:
Our Views on the Online Filter Bubble:
Carl and Pete watched the video of Eli Pariser, courtesy of TED.com , for Show 64 of our tech radio show. Below, you will soon find a transcript of our look at the Internet Bubble.
Extract from Show 64's discussion of the Internet Filter Bubble
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Filter Bubble Transcript
Here's a transcript of our feature on Eli Pariser's Filter Bubble speech, taken from Show 64:
Carl:
So it's Focus time, and what are we going to talk about today, Pete?
Pete:
Well, we're talking about the internet. Now, I know we've done that before, but there's been a whole bunch of news stories that have kind of converged in the last couple of months. So it's a good time to discuss the internet, and particularly the future of the internet.
Carl:
"The future of the internet"?
Pete:
I want to talk to you about something called TED. Have you heard of TED before?
Carl:
Edward, do you mean? - Edward Vth. Are we going back even further? - Edward VIIth?
Pete:
Let me tell you what TED is. TED is all about ideas worth spreading, and basically they're a series of conferences, normally that take place in the US, although there are some over here in the UK, that discuss kind of cutting-edge problems, things that affect us all, particularly technology-related stuff, and it's all driven from a website called TED.com.
Carl:
Oh yes - TED, now this would be the video you're going to play me today, isn't it?
Pete:
Now, I stumbled across this about a month ago, and when I watched it, it really kind of made me gear change on what my views are on the internet. What I want to do, to those of you that are listening to us, what I'd like you to do is, if you can, pause the playback, and I'd like you to go somewhere where there's a YouTube facility, and have a look at this clip. To make it easy, I've set up https://www.frequencycast.co.uk/ted, and that will take you straight to the YouTube clip in question. While you're doing that, I'm going to also pause at this end and play this to Carl.
Carl:
OK, I'm sitting comfortably. Let the show begin.
Pete:
And for those that haven't managed to get access to YouTube, here's a very brief clip:
Eli:
Now, this is how the founding mythology goes, right? In a broadcast society, there were these gatekeepers, the editors, and they controlled the flows of information. Along came the internet, and it swept them out of the way, and it allowed all of us to connect together, and it was awesome. But that's not actually what's happening right now. What we're seeing is more of a passing of the torch, from human gatekeepers to algorithmic ones. The thing is that the algorithms don't yet have the kind of embedded ethics that the editors did. So if algorithms are going to curate the world for us, if they're going to decide what we get to see and what we don't get to see, then we need to make sure that they're not just keyed to relevance. We need to make sure that they also show us things that are uncomfortable, or challenging, or importance. This is what TED does, right? - other points of view.
Pete:
What you heard there was a brief extract of a nine-minute video that's up on TED.com. The chap you were listening to there is a guy called Eli Pariser, and he's warning us that the new algorithms that the likes of Facebook and Google are using could actually make a big change to the way we use the internet. Now Carl, what did you think about what Eli had to say there?
Carl:
Well, other than the technical side, a very slick presentation style he has, with a beautifully used PowerPoint. What I got from it was actually quite interesting. It's not something that hadn't sort of concerned me before, but he put it into technical terms and correct terms as well.
Pete:
So effectively, what Eli has said in his presentation there is that we're all living in an internet bubble. What he did was, he got two completely different friends to both go to Google, and type in "Egypt". One of them got information about the uprising, and the various political situation in Egypt, and the other guy got tourist information, which is basically indicating that there's two different types of search out there, and that Google can keep an eye on what you're doing and the kind of stuff you're interested in looking up, and serving up different content accordingly.
Carl:
Yes, I think I would have got more from it if someone had been able to argue their corner.
Pete:
Well, the other side of the coin is why this filtering takes place, and effectively it's all about advertising. So you're on the internet, you're doing stuff, and they want to serve you relevant and appropriate advertising. So you may have noticed this - if you do something like, I don't know - let's say you go onto the John Lewis website, and you start looking at office chairs, you might suddenly find out that you get bombarded with a lot of ads for office chairs. Now, that's all this specific targeting going on. Similarly, if you're looking around Google, and all you're really interested in is pop culture and music and the like, they're not going to give you anything too heavy and Washington University. So this filtering is actually done for your benefit more than Google's benefit necessarily. The same's true of things like Facebook, where they know what your interests are, and so they give you ads and content related to what they think you're interested in, the idea being that a gatekeeper is deciding what is the right thing for you to be watching or listening to.
Carl:
Well, I appreciate it's not time for paranoia, because they're doing it with the best intentions in the world, I'm sure. I do have quite a lot of reserve judgement on their ability to do this. Maybe the internet needs to go the way of television? - you know, the old terrestrial channels, where you've got BBC1 and BBC2, which are totally advert-free, and that would be some sort of server that you could access which would be without adverts, full stop, and that would be for generic information. Then you have the commercial internet connection as well.
Pete:
Yeah, that kind of makes sense. I mean, personally for me I'd like a filter on/off switch with Google, somewhere that I can decide whether I want the entire internet, or the personalised version of the internet. But I like the idea of the commercial and the public service version. Would one be faster than the other?
Carl:
Well clearly, like British Rail, we know which would be the faster.
Pete:
There you go. So if you managed to watch the TED clip, we'd be very interested in your views. Let us know what you think about these algorithmic gatekeepers taking over and deciding whether you're fit and able to watch what they want you to watch.
Carl:
Well, I feel that whole experience has made me vastly intellectual, and I've become a completely different person. I don't know whether I can go ahead with this show with the same tongue-in-cheek cheese that I provide.
Pete:
That'd be a benefit for all of us. Talking of benefits, we've just had some new EU legislation come in about cookies. Websites now have to be very careful about cookies, to the point that you might now start getting pop ups saying, "Warning: this website has a cookie - would you like to accept the cookie?".
Carl:
Yes, of course, and if you're selecting a cookie, make sure if you have a nut allergy, you don't select one with nuts in it.
Pete:
The next piece of internet news relates to TalkTalk. They have added some server-side security that does three things - are you paying attention?
Carl:
Always.
Pete:
Thing number one: server-side virus protection. What they do is, they look at the websites that you're visiting, and decide whether they think they're safe for you to look at them or not.
Carl:
Is this not another vetting system going on?
Pete:
Designed to keep you safe, apparently. They also have something called Kidsafe, which lets parents decide which websites should be blocked and which should be let through, which kind of sounds like a good idea.
Carl:
Well, that sounds like you're interactive with that, so you obviously have a choice, so that sounds all right.
Pete:
And the other thing they've added is homework time, which blocks social networking and gaming sites between set times, so kids carry on with their homework.
Carl:
No, that seems all right.
Pete:
But what about this idea of Talk Talk checking every page you access, and deciding whether that should go through or not?
Carl:
Well, it depends on what their terms and conditions are though. What's their category of safety? Do they provide you with a lifejacket, when you go on the internet?
Pete:
I can't help thinking back to the fact that TalkTalk, or one of the providers playing around with Phorm, which is this idea about capturing where you've been and giving you adverts relating to websites you've been to, I'm assuming some of the same technology's there, but this time, rather than for advertising purposes, this is to keep us all safe.
Carl:
Yeah.
Pete:
And the final bit of news I have for you with the Internet is Skype.
Carl:
Oh, I remember that - that's the free telephone lines, isn't it?
Pete:
Microsoft has just bought Skype - interesting.
Carl:
Why have they bought Skype, exactly? What was the benefit there?
Pete:
Well, good question. I suspect it's so that things like the Microsoft Messenger and Live services will start integrating voice services, but the big one is probably things like Office, where you can now find that, as you're writing a document, you can share it with your colleagues. Things like Outlook as well, instead of sending an email, you can do live chat, so it's kind of integrating everything into one solution.
Carl:
Maybe a good thing, maybe a bad thing. There's probably lots of opinions on that. If you want to tell us your opinion, don't forget to email us or text us, or just blog us or whatever else you'd like to do to us. Turn us off, maybe.
Pete:
Providing the internet doesn't filter us out, of course.
Next: Interview with Richard Fletcher, boss of Plusnet
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