A New Kind of Web Censorship, and why you should care

Here's a video you can watch, but it's about 10 minutes long so I'll give you a short version of it.

Google, Facebook, and other online content/search providers are now tweaking your news feeds, search results, and generally what you are guided to on the web in a way that may actually be detrimental to an informed public. There's nothing sinister about their motives, they're just trying to keep you comfortable. If you are very conservative (for example), Google picks up on this based on what you search for and which links you go to, so they will tailor your search results so that you will only receive news and search results that are aligned with your current political views. The trouble with this is that Liberals will never get conservative perspectives on current events, conservatives will never get progressive perspectives on current events, and "informed" people will actually be in a bubble where their worldview is never challenged. I personally need to have my views challenged.

I find this rather disturbing. Without being confronted with uncomfortable points of view, people become fools. I need my views challenged, sometimes I change my mind about things when this happens, sometimes not, but it's important to face the other side of an issue. Without doing so we loose a great deal of understanding. When people on differing sides of issues get down to brass tacks, they are typically not that far apart in what they actually want. I think tailored news and information further drives a wedge in political discourse and hamstrings any progress.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOE1HFEL8XA

The coolest part of this for me is, I suspected it. I only find posts from SRP on my google searches. Now how to change that little feature. I hate being ignorant to what else is going on.

I thought that was a fantastic video. Thank you for posting it. And I agree with you....I need my views challenged. Hanging around the same people is boring, as is reading the same material or viewing the same material.

I do love TED as well. So many interesting people have been showcased.

Mozilla Firefox has a setting to delete all cookies and Web site information when the browser exits (you can probably do this with any browser). This procedure seems to prevent the targeted search results in the search engines I have tried.

If they can't track your browsing/search habits, hopefully they can't narrow the search results they provide. Hope that helps.

Thanks for that, Trout. I use Firefox.

Kind of reminds me of something I was told in my formative years. You can't stand for something unless you are well educated in what you are standing against.

Thats interesting stuff, but I cant really say I'm surprised. I usually go to FARK, Reddit, ect for more obscure news, so it doesnt affect me all that much, they pretty much carter to all sides.

I figured this thread was about SOPA before I clicked on it. Thats an even nastier piece of work.

I fail to see how this is in any way different to how any of the major media outlets have been treating us for decades. Or governments. Or schools. Or Universities.

If you rely on other people to inform you, then you know only what other people want you to know. Being a critical reader/listener/watcher is the only way to approach any sources of information IMO.

James.

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Originally Posted by Jimbo

I fail to see how this is in any way different to how any of the major media outlets have been treating us for decades. Or governments. Or schools. Or Universities.

If you rely on other people to inform you, then you know only what other people want you to know. Being a critical reader/listener/watcher is the only way to approach any sources of information IMO.

James.

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Google used to just give you what you searched for, but now they give you what they think you're most likely to want to see. The example from the video is telling. Two people googled "Egypt". One person got news of the revolution, the other got travel bargains. Just from a practical viewpoint, I'd like to know about a revolution at the same time that I'm booking my flight there.

Sorry, I realise that came across as snarky. I guess it is a bit snarky, but not at the video or anyone here - I like that people are aware of this kind of thing.

What frustrates me is that an idea like this is considered so profound it is a TED talk. It frustrates me because it is clear and ever-growing evidence that our society values a good education so little that "good" students are the ones that parrot the current paradigm, not the ones that think outside the box or question the status quo. It frustrates me because you can see the forces at work that cause this "will this be on the test" mentality. And it scares me that there is one clear and definitive outcome of such behaviour, and I fear we are not too far from it. (I think the GFC is just the beginning of the consequences).

So yes, this guy makes good points, but they are not only valid for the web. It is valid for our lives. The problem is clearing the cache of our lives is not so easy as it is on a web browser.

James.

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Originally Posted by joesixpack

Google used to just give you what you searched for, but now they give you what they think you're most likely to want to see. The example from the video is telling. Two people googled "Egypt". One person got news of the revolution, the other got travel bargains. Just from a practical viewpoint, I'd like to know about a revolution at the same time that I'm booking my flight there.

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Nah man - google used to give you whatever someone else coded into a web page. The big problem now is that Google is filtering the trash for you!

James.

I honestly don't see how this is censorship

The cookie/cache clearing doesn't work too well. The moment google/facebook/etc identify you as yourself (i.e. you login into an account that they can link to you, or they match your IP address) they can apply the same personalization/filter to the full extent or just partially depending on the confidence of the match.

I wouldn't call it a censorship either. It's simply using computers to do faster the filtering job that you'd be doing anyways. Remember that these algorithms are trained by you, that's why they produce liberal results for liberals and conservative results for conservatives. I see it as simply amplifying whatever your tendencies are, i.e. it is helping you being yourself. An after school special for the modern days if you will.

BTW as far as I know the filtering that google does is ordering, so it's not hiding information which would be censoring, but rather prioritizing it in the way that you've trained it to do.

+1 to what Gugi said. This is not censorship.
I agree that it is a bit fishy that search result relevance should be person dependent, though it is of course not know whether the preference is short term or long term (i.e. in the egypt example: was I looking for holiday stuff the half hour before the comparison or not).

With personalized advertizement, this has been going on for ages. And iirc, it's not the first time that search result ordering has happened.
As long as all information is still presented, I don't think it can be classified as censorship.

This fits perfectly with Google's mission statement.

If it is a problem for enough people, a new search provider will emerge as king.

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Originally Posted by gugi

The cookie/cache clearing doesn't work too well. The moment google/facebook/etc identify you as yourself (i.e. you login into an account that they can link to you, or they match your IP address) they can apply the same personalization/filter to the full extent or just partially depending on the confidence of the match.

I wouldn't call it a censorship either. It's simply using computers to do faster the filtering job that you'd be doing anyways. Remember that these algorithms are trained by you, that's why they produce liberal results for liberals and conservative results for conservatives. I see it as simply amplifying whatever your tendencies are, i.e. it is helping you being yourself. An after school special for the modern days if you will.

BTW as far as I know the filtering that google does is ordering, so it's not hiding information which would be censoring, but rather prioritizing it in the way that you've trained it to do.

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I think that gugi's definition of "amplifying" is quite precise.

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Originally Posted by gugi

I wouldn't call it a censorship either. It's simply using computers to do faster the filtering job that you'd be doing anyways. Remember that these algorithms are trained by you, that's why they produce liberal results for liberals and conservative results for conservatives. I see it as simply amplifying whatever your tendencies are, i.e. it is helping you being yourself.

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I agree that censorship isn't the correct word, but I disagree that they're doing things that we would do ourselves; the entire point of the talk is that these algorithms are increasingly tailoring their future results and applying filters based on past searches against what some (many?) people would want. If I search for razors and click through to "Wade & Butcher" then those are the filters I want at that time, but by no means do I want my future searches for razors to include more Wade & Butcher while leaving out Genco.

There should be a toggle. If I want tailored searches then that's fine, but if I want to find out things going on in the world, particularly current events, then I don't want my past searches to have an affect.

Of course if it ever becomes a serious issue then an alternative will pop-up. Right now I think the legislation being proposed by the RIAA, MPAA, and other similar organizations (see: SOPA / PIPA) are much greater threats to how the Internet works, particularly in America.

SOPA/PIPA is possibly the most dangerous thing in the pipeline by miles. It would give the federal government the power to basically censor the internet like China does (blocking websites) on the mere allegation by say Sony or Universal that someone has "pirated" something from them (whether it happens to be true or not), potentially shutting down a small e-commerce business (self published ebook or music album).

RIAA does not like the fact that nowadays you can do a far better job (& keep far more money) publishing albums yourself rather than having to go through their cartel & I wouldn't put it past their members to engage in outright lying about a website containing "copyrighted material". "If we can't have money from your work, you can't either". I realize this sounds a little far fetched, but this has happened before: Universal Music Keeps Trying To Claim Zoe Keating's Royalty Checks, Despite Having Nothing To Do With Her | Techdirt Now imagine what they could also do under SOPA/PIPA?

The thing is, do you think the average Joe Bloggs has the resources to defend himself against this?

EDIT: forgot to mention this: I am not really a fan of Justin Bieber at all,but the fact remains, without his singing songs on YouTube, he would not have a career today. As it is, under SOPA, he could face up to 5 years in prison.

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Originally Posted by hoglahoo

I honestly don't see how this is censorship

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It puts you in a box and controls your intellectual feeding. You no longer get contradictory viewpoints, only similar ones to reinforce what you may already believe or lean towards. Without dissenting dialogue or debate(censorship) or the sharing of DIFFERENT facts/ideas you can not make a rational or well thought out opinion/decision . My father was an over the road driver for many years, spending weeks and months in a truck with little human interaction, it has taken years since his retirement to even consider an opposing idea or fact. I believe this was due to his being intellectually "cut off" from the rest of the population. He had no thoughts/ or ideas/opinions to consider other than his own.

good points. However, funny, I googled "what is nun2sharp's opinion on this matter?" and it said that you basically agree with me ;)

Seriously though I don't expect google to give me biased or unbiased data. When I search, I usually know what I want to find - when I don't, I know I'll have to research it out anyway :shrug: If someone expects google to hold their intellectual hand they might not be served as well by whatever changes google has to made as far as how it presents their search results

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Originally Posted by hoglahoo

good points. However, funny, I googled "what is nun2sharp's opinion on this matter?"

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As you should, it is the only way to come to a rational decision. I think one of the things you said in your post is the most pertinent, "research", we live in an increasingly "spoon fed" society, especially when it comes to the decision making process, instead of researching an issue we wonder what does so and so tell me. Wether it be the talking heads at FOX or MSNBC or the "gubmint man".

Another way around this is to use
https://startpage.com/
as your search engine of choice.

Here is a good explanation of why.
https://startpage.com/eng/protect-privacy.html

Edit; I clicked on the link to the AOL database on that page and typed in "Straight razor", that showed results of all the searches of that term. I then clicked on on the random user to see what else they had searched.
and got this;Stalking user #67391

Pretty much an eye opener as to what kind of data is available to those people.

Maybe Google is like some profit focused advertisement company and not really a public service . . . Ya suppose?

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Originally Posted by AFDavis11

Maybe Google is like some profit focused advertisement company and not really a public service . . . Ya suppose?

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That's just crazy talk!


Seriously though, they are in the advertising business and they direct advertisers my way based on what i search for. I certainly don't mind that. What bothers me is that organizations who's political outlook is different from mine are dropped to the bottom of the search pile. I dislike that Facebook drops out friends of mine based on what my views (I have christian friends who disappeared from my feed because of atheist pages I affiliate with. At least, this is my assumption). After seeing that video I went and saw what my feed preferences were and saw that they were much different than I'd thought. Some people were posting as much as they always had, yet there status updates were not getting to me. Why is this a good thing?

And to answer all of the people who say "This isn't really censorship, it's not a big deal" I say no, it's not a big deal, if I know ahead of time that this is how my news will be brought to me. And no, it's not "censorship" in the sense that any government is clamping down on me. What it IS though, is a further isolation of people from one another. What I'd like to see is everyone, not just the people I agree with.

And you think politics isn't about advertising?