Is Google really filtering my news? - Librarian of Fortune - 0 views
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John Pearce on 06 Sep 11"I've been reading snippets of Eli Pariser's book, The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding From You. He leads off the book with a discussion of the effect of Google's "personalization" feature on the ranking of search results. This feature uses 54 signals (what browser version you're using, your prior searches, geographic location, and so on) to customize search results for each user. Pariser was concerned about this and tested it by asking two friends to run the same search at the same time and comparing the results. He found that the results were disturbingly different, and concluded that search engines are "increasingly biased to share our own views. More and more, your computer monitor is a kind of one-way mirror, reflecting your own interests while algorithmic observers watch what you click.""