Web Searches, The Filter Bubble Phenomenon, And The Search For Truth
https://choosetoencrypt.com/search-engines/filter-bubbles-searchencrypt-com-avoids/
This evening I attended the lecture “Democracy, Today: Fake News, Social Networks, and Algorithms” given by Northeastern Professor David Lazer.Professor Lazer began the lecture by describing knowledge as a network phenomenon: we have little direct knowledge about the world, instead acquiring most of our knowledge through a network of informational influences. Clusters naturally form in this vast network, each of which represents a distinct understanding of the world. Those clusters are becoming more and more isolated from each other with the rise of social media. Social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter produce for each user personalized news feeds and search results, selecting which pieces of information to show the user based oh his/her past behavior. This is called the Filter Bubble Phenomenon. Filter bubbles increasingly isolate us from differing perspectives by showing us only compatible information, thus restricting our worldview, polarizing groups in society, and arguably destroying democracy.
The concept of filter bubbles reminded me of our discussion of information networks and the World-Wide Web. For example, page rank plays a large role in constructing our views of the world. The #1 page in a web search, for example, can generate such a large concentration of attention that other pages get drowned out, lost in the vast web network. The distribution of hubs and authorities within web networks can also be influenced by the relevant pages that come up in web searches.
As technology advances, we are becoming ever the more vulnerable to manipulation by information, or mis-information, spread on the web. In the age of information, I wonder how much information we inadvertently turn a blind eye to.