Customer Reviews

The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding from You

5 star:		(23)
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The Filter Bubble is an outstanding book--a compelling and important argument, delivered persuasively through real reporting, analysis, telling anecdote and hard data.

One of Eli Pariser's central points is that personalized internet services--Google, Facebook, advertising--can put you into a "you loop", in which they show you what you think you want, and then you wind up wanting those things more because you see them more often. Invisibly, your momentary impulses (click on this, ignore that) shape your reality, and your reality shapes what you respond to.

Since reading the book, I've found myself compulsively testing one of its main case studies: Google's automatically personalized search results. Try searching for "guns": I don't see the NRA on the first page, but friends do. Huge differences on "abortion" too: some people see Planned Parenthood, other people see Catholic.com. Even searching for "bias" shows different results to me vs my wife!

Drawing on history, academic research, exclusive interviews, and a huge range of other sources, the author takes a hard look at the algorithms that increasingly shape how all of us think. He contends that unchecked profit-centric personalization threatens democracy. When you read the book, you'll come away convinced. And you'll appreciate how the book itself makes our democracy stronger.

The Filter Bubble does one of the most important things a book CAN do -- it sounds a warning about a major problem that has, til now, been mostly invisible. But Pariser doesn't just tell us how giants like Google and Facebook are limiting the information we see. He also explains, in clear, energetic prose, how the personalization of the Internet is affecting our relationships, our identities, our creativity and our democracy. As an added bonus, the book is a highly engaging and entertaining read -- packed with insights and anecdotes from fields as diverse as urban planning, advertising, literature, sociology, and computer science. At a time when exposure to surprising and challenging information is getting harder and harder to come by, this book will definitely broaden your perspective.

This riveting book picks up where Pariser's explosive TED talk left off. In a voice that is as fun to read as it is smart, The Filter Bubble arms readers with a thorough understanding of the powers at play on the Internet today -- how they invisibly affect your experience, the implications of these effects for the individual as well as for society, and what each of us can do about it.

Anyone who Googles, gets news online, shops online, or uses Facebook simply must read this book.

Am I seeing an advertisement for life insurance because of my good credit score, or because tracking software says I rarely search for doctors and therefore look healthy?

If Facebook eliminates a video of war carnage, is that a token of respect for the wounded or one more reflexive effort of a major company to ingratiate itself with a Washington establishment currently committed to indefinite military engagement in the Middle East?

Does Google downrank sites because of their poor quality, or to maximize its own ad revenues?

Questions like these will persist as long as the "filter bubble" exists. Pariser does a fantastic job showing how the web is increasingly becoming a hall of mirrors, a perplexing set of chutes and ladders where algorithms can suddenly alter your view of the world (and status) without telling you.

Read this brilliant book to find out the real costs of an "instant information age."

The Filter Bubble is a book everybody who cares about the Internet needs to read!

We're entering a new period of growth in the basic functioning of the Internet. The web we once knew is changing - it's becoming personalized. This isn't always a bad thing - the Internet is massive and we need ways to make it relevant. But what's alarming is that these new personalization filters are changing things without us knowing and they're focused on making money.

Websites need clicks and they're going to show us whatever articles, search results, ads, or data they can to get those clicks. This is a dangerous proposition. There are certain things we NEED to see, but might never click on. Like news from the ongoing wars in the Middle East. Also concerning is that the increase in personalization means we'll keep seeing things that re-affirm or personal beliefs. If you think partisan bickering is bad now, just wait.

It's not all doom and gloom, far from it. What's most exciting is how early the book comes in the development of 'the new personalized web'. It's not a historical account, it's actively part of the ongoing discussions happening at Google, Facebook, and the New York Times (among many others). Eli has managed to place himself just in front of the tech wave - no small feat - while providing a detailed analysis of what's currently taking place. He also offers clear ways to resolve the situation, ways that work with the existing system and help protect the open Internet we all love.

Very well worth the read - and then some!

Eli Pariser's "Filter Bubble" largely restates a thesis developed a decade ago in both Cass Sunstein's "Republic.com" and Andrew L. Shapiro's "The Control Revolution," that increased personalization is breeding a dangerous new creature -- Anti-Democratic Man. "Democracy requires citizens to see things from one another's point of view," Pariser notes,"but instead we're more and more enclosed in our own bubbles."

Pariser worries that personalized digital "filters" like Facebook, Google, Twitter, Pandora, and Netflix are narrowing our horizons about news and culture and leaving "less room for the chance encounters that bring insights and learning." "Technology designed to give us more control over our lives is actually taking control away," he fears.

Pariser joins a growing brigade of Internet pessimists. Almost every year for the past decade a new book has been published warning that the Internet is making us stupid, debasing our culture, or destroying social interaction. Many of these Net pessimists -- whose ranks include Andrew Keen (The Cult of the Amateur), Lee Siegel (Against the Machine), Jaron Lanier (You Are Not a Gadget) and Nicholas Carr (The Shallows) -- lament the rise of "The Daily Me," or the rise of hyper-personalized news, culture, and information. They claim increased information and media customization will lead to close-mindedness, corporate brainwashing, an online echo-chamber, or even the death of deliberative democracy.

Implicitly, criticisms like those set forth by Net pessimists represent a call for a return to a "simpler time" and some mythical "good ol' days" when someone wiser than us was setting the agenda, or when our options were limited to things that were supposedly better for us. But were we really better off back then? It's largely revisionist history. The good ol' days weren't so great. By most measures we're more informed and interactive than ever before. Here's a simple test that works particularly well for anyone over the age of 35: Did you have more serendipitous encounters with alternative viewpoints before or after the rise of the Internet?

Most of us had very limited interactions with people and ideas beyond our communities before the Net. Even as modern technology has allowed increased user-customization, it has also opened our eyes to a world of new ideas, perspectives, and culture. The Digital Age is more personalized but also more participatory. It promotes greater cultural heterogeneity and gives everyone a better chance to be heard.

Pariser doesn't offer much of a blueprint regarding how he'd like to change things. That's unsurprising since the logical conclusion to draw from his thesis is that someone should be doing more to de-personalize the Net and force us to consume more information that they think is good for us.

The problem with this "eat your greens" approach -- besides being somewhat elitist -- is that it just isn't practical. People will continue to want, and get, a more personalized web experience. But that doesn't mean deliberative democracy is dying. As the existence of MoveOn.org and countless groups like it proves, vigorous debate and political activism have never been stronger.

This book is so much like Eli Pariser himself that reading it is like a series of electrifying conversations with him. It is provocative, eye-opening, thoughtful, alarming, full of terrific stories and thoroughly entertaining. Whether or not the Internet is your focus, your won't forget your evenings with Eli.

If you want to understand the next big thing that will affect how we use the internet, you need to read The Filter Bubble. Think there's a standard set of Google results that everyone sees? Not anymore. Think that it's just coincidence that after you check out a distant friend's Facebook profile, they suddenly start appearing in your newsfeed? Nope. Pariser explains how the web is being personalized just for you, why it doesn't always work, and how it could undermine the fabric of our civic life.

His writing is gripping and filled with fascinating stories and anecdotes that illustrate his points. Overall, it's a really fun, but important read. I encourage everyone to check it out.

Reference librarians today observe young students hitting the keys on a topic before they even begin to think about it. Some reference librarians themselves even behave this way. Carried far enough this work is a nightmare scenario. Pariser organizes and contexualizes search-and-retrieval phenomena most of us have been observing for many months now and postulates behavioral, psychological, and societal effects worthy of heightened awareness both in regard to their effect on our ability to think laterally and to fulfill our roles as citizens of a republic and community members of planet Earth. Sennett's book (1970)has implications for understanding the censorial mind. Those who know the history of fascism can probably carry the linkages further. Pariser's book is essential reading for those who treasure the promise and possibility of the Internet, for those with eyes for the forest . . . .

*****
"An invisible revolution has taken place in the way we use the net, but the increasing personalisation of information by search engines such as Google threatens to limit our access to information and enclose us in a self-reinforcing world view." -- Eli Pariser, The Filter Bubble

I always assumed, in blissful misinformation, that when searching a term, I retrieve what we all find in response, same results, wrong! - Since December 2009, this is no longer true, according to Eli Pariser, MoveOn.org President. Now you get the result that Google's algorithm suggests is best for you in particular, while someone else may see entirely different results. Pariser noticed a pattern of differing responses to search engine queries based on a user's past Internet search history, such that people with a certain orientation would get one set of responses while others might get an entirely different set of responses, based on the person's use of Google, Microsoft, or Yahoo to search for a specific phrase or term on the Internet. In other words, Google results are selective, directed by its a link analysis algorithm, named after Larry Page, being used by the Google Internet search engine, Google's PageRank and Beyond: The Science of Search Engine Rankings ,that assigns a relative numerical weighting to each element of a set of 'hyperlinked' data/doc. Accordingly, the World Wide Web, would utilize those elements to calibrate its relative importance within the set, as the most authoritative based on stored pages' links.

In a recent article by the author, to clarify this difference in action, he gave a compelling example of the Deepwater Horizon rig accident. He expounded, "In the spring of 2010, while the remains of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig were spewing oil into the Gulf of Mexico, I asked two friends to search for the term 'BP'. They're pretty similar - educated white left-leaning women who live in the north-east. But the results they saw were quite different. One saw investment information about BP. The other saw news. For one, the first page of results contained links about the oil spill; for the other, there was nothing about it except for a promotional ad from BP. Even the number of results returned differed - 180 million for one friend and 139 million for the other." Amazon, my major cultural search agent, is quite transparent about the array of recommended books, stating they are based on books I search, order, or own. But, as the author claimed, "it's one thing to personalize products and another to personalize whole information flows, like Google and Facebook are doing."

An ever increasing majority of search addicted fans assume search engines are not biased, just because of their comfortably presented search results, tailored to share their own interests and priorities, but then reflect more of their own view points. Your Laptop or Desktop monitor is a kind of one-way mirror, which is partially transparent, and partly reflecting your own interests while algorithmic monitors record what you click. Google's announcement marked the turning point of an important but almost invisible quiet revolution in the way we retrieve and ultimately consume filtered information after the era of personalization erupted as a consequence of Google smart selector. A query on the every minute search of 'stem cells', with the Google personalization P. R. Algorithm, could produce a diametrically different selection of results for scientists who support stem-cell research and activists who oppose it. "Proof of climate change" search might turn up differently picked results for an environmental activist and an unclean energy corporation executive.

"The era of personalization is here to evolve, and it's upending many of our predictions about what the internet would do. The creators of the internet envisioned something bigger and more important than a global system for sharing pictures of pets."

Numerical Algorithms for Personalized Search in Self-organizing Information Networks