what google and facebook are hiding from us

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOTPz7KnwIA

10 minutes that are really worth watching

possible solution and google alternative: http://duckduckgo.com/

They obviously started having these filters to 'help' the consumer, but what they don't realize is that 'helping' and 'hurting' are often the same thing.

Nice video.

yep

does anyone here have ideas for a good alternative for creating relevant information/results? or is there anyone here who thinks it would be better to have one-size-fits-all relevancy results?

vury interesting.

and what comes up for you dudes when you google Egypt now?

NSFW

  On 7/4/2011 at 10:29 PM, underscore said:

vury interesting.

 

and what comes up for you dudes when you google Egypt now?

 

pretty much the same as your results.

is there a chrome extension that turns off all comments on all news sites / youtube / blogs? news / media comments are my least favorite part about the internet, and i'd like them out of my bubble.

It makes sence to filter some things and not everything

  On 7/4/2011 at 10:38 PM, Craig Anderson said:

sence

french for sense

hmmm so i get his point but this kind of filtering has been always there. the difference is that before you would get the overall most sought information (lowest common denominator) and now you get what is likely more of interest to you. I preffer the latter and I don't see that so alarming but yes, I agree that these algorithms need some work. (and the facebook one can be turned off btw).

  On 7/5/2011 at 2:06 AM, GORDO said:

(and the facebook one can be turned off btw).

easily?

yeah, scroll to the bottom and click on edit options.

Important stuff to note. Thanks man.

the responsibility lies w/ us all.

i like to click on facebook the "most recent" but every few days it switched back on me to "top new". this is bull

  On 7/5/2011 at 2:59 AM, sup said:

i like to click on facebook the "most recent" but every few days it switched back on me to "top new". this is bull

I probably do that every other time i go on. Shouldn't it know by now that that's what i want to see? Stupid algorithms.

  On 7/4/2011 at 10:29 PM, Enter a new display name said:

NSFW

 

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

are you a mind-reader

I guess all that matters is that WATMM doesn't do it.

and what when gmail started putting "importent" tags on my mails!! it was so bad (useless random) that i just shut it off!!! f***king computers

the REAL filtering is done by the BIG guys running the news corporations. They choose what to cover and who to feed it to. We, the consumers, choose from this finite material.

Think about the biased coverage we got from FOX news during the height of the financial crisis or we got during the Iraq Wars.

also consider: national news papers have mostly national-related topics and some topics being discussed in/with counties of interest (part of western nations, NATO, NAFTA, EURO UNION, UN, whatever etc.). They don't really cover national news of Liechtenstein or Zahir. We don't care so they don't cover it. Then we have large center and then small center state-centered new stations which pick up the biggest national news but focus mostly on city/state level news--the small ones focus on local roads and weather/school closures for the area etc. Then you have stuff like feeds on yahoo and google... Then you have shit like facebook news, twitter news feeds, etc.

As you can see everything gets more focused as you get closer to the individual. Don't forget OUR OWN BRAIN does this constantly. lots of fun ways to test this out if you're interested! So to say that we do it in our head, and we support it at every level of the news, but oh wait not on facebook and google, is crazy.

I think google et al. area really just doing this to tailor the experience we want... to market the things we want to buy etc. based on things we have selected in the past. It's a bonus for both of us b/c I get quicker and more detailed access to the stuff I want (I don't buy the stuff I don't want) and they look real good for providing it. so I'll continue the relationship and not move on to another brower, operating system, book store, whatever.

The counter-argument that people are going to lose out by not having the "option" or choice when presented with a fair slate of options is bollocks. the game is rigged already, and if they have selected it in the past (say a type of far right leaning news article) at a decent rate (the rate thing is the trickiest part) it would be in the brower's interest to make it available in the future. Capitalism being what it is will figure out the perfect rate for us.

tldr i know.. and I did it stoned!

Well, I think that the personalized sorting technology is pretty cool, and I don't want it to disappear, but I'm completely in favour of google having options for different sorting algorithms so you can choose.

But each option has to be algorithmic, because you can't have an editor sort through the internet. There's too much information, obviously.

I'm probably the biggest techtard on this forum, but even I cottoned on to this ages ago (Facebook links to women gagging to meet 40 year old men were a dead giveaway). If you're really as unable to function in your everyday life without the internet as the bloke in this video seems to be then you deserve to be dictated to in such a manner. The good thing about being a dinosaur is being able to remember when having something like 'the internet' was as far-fetched as, erm, Star Wars or something.

Two posters above me seem to be posting perfect sense, btw.

  On 7/5/2011 at 2:21 AM, GORDO said:

yeah, scroll to the bottom and click on edit options.

just tried this, and there is no bottom!

My problem with all this is that though I have no problem with Google and Facebook attempting to tailor an "experience" for me, what worries me are the diminishing chances of stumbling upon new material. I think the whole process is restrictive; if algorithms are constantly "refining" what I like and where I browse, those narrow options must surely feed back into the process and ultimately redirect my browsing activities, no?