Internet Ads and Privacy
In How Free Web Content Traps People in an Abyss of Ads and Clickbait, a lot of points that Dr. Wu brings up concerning the pervasive use of internet ads relates to much of the material we have been learning in class. The article elaborates on how over the past few years, more and more companies are investing in ways to get users to click more on their ads. It also mentions that the “freeness” of the information stored on the web comes with a cost: people are content with allowing companies to choose which links to click, which in effect limits the accessibility of certain webpages.
In class, we’ve learned that the web can be represented as a directed graph, with its webpages as nodes and links as either navigational and transactional. Navigational are links that takes users from one page to another while transactional are links primarily to perform transactions on the computers hosting the content. Therefore, the goal of a search engine like Google is to differentiate between these two types of links, assessing and indexing webpages that would be of interest to the user. However, it might be doing its job too well. Much of Dr. Wu’s argument with internet ads and search engines is that many companies are paying Google to advertise their products. This compromises the heart of what a search engine is for: to bring the most relevant information to the hands of the user. Instead, the first link that pops up after searching might not be the best one suited for you needs, rather the one that has paid Google the most to advertise on their search engine. Dr. Wu calls this a “pay-for service where the highest bidder gets the best results”. Personally, I believe this is an issue because this compromises the information users receive on the web. How can we trust information that is so heavily biased in one direction? I think that such marketing schemes has narrowed the scope of what is accessible on the web. Some navigational links directed to certain webpages may never be accessed or used because there is a heavy bias to a select few. It is dangerous to think that companies who do not have our interests at heart have so much control over our preferences as a consumer. Even more dangerous is how that power can be transferable to the government, which fortunately hasn’t been much of an issue so far with our search engines. Indeed, Dr. Wu’s point of a payoff for free information is accurate: we are too willing to accept selection bias in the information that we search for on the web.
Article: http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/10/17/498237314/how-free-web-content-traps-people-in-an-abyss-of-ads-and-clickbait