If You Don’t Know, We create Our Own Filter Bubble

According to Eli Pariser, nowadays the Internet has formed a filter bubble for us, which blocks us from receiving information that contains various perspectives. Nevertheless, I have a different opinion than Pariser, I think we make the filter bubble by ourself.

Praiser gives an example that he assigns two of his friends to type the same keyword in google, yet these two people get different results from each other. He suggests that the search engine automatically eliminates some information, in other word, it controls the flow of the information. Praiser mentions his concern on people only getting the information that they would agree upon. However, from my point of view, the search engine is just doing its job right. In order to call it a “smart search engine”, we would expect the search engine to provide information that we are interested in.

 

Among the thousands of researches we have done, we always choose the ones that either best interest us or ones we consider as the most useful; therefore, slowly our own laptop learns and memorizes our interests. Because the purpose of a “smart” search engine is to serve the user better, the Internet will edit out some information automatically based on the last research we have done. If we change to a brand new laptop, I believe the links pop up would be the ones get visited most often from the other users. Just like this, when we are looking up something that we know nothing about, we can always began with the information that the majority of people would consider helpful.

Moreover, instead of blaming the Internet for controlling the flow of information, we could have change they way we pose the keywords. Certainly I state that the search engine is smart, yet the keywords we put in the search bar also affect the results we get. I remember Dr. O provided an example that the supporters for Hillary Clinton thought she could win because of the information they saw were mostly tend to her side. But couldn’t those supporters spend some time to do research on both sides? From my perspective, supporters for Hillary Clinton would want to learn more news about how she won more popularity, which leads them purposely to ignore news about Donald Trump—or if they see news that praises Trump, they may choose to block that website or shake their heads thinking that was fake news. Gradually, the Internet would only show news these supporters would like to see, and no wonder they feel surprised when the final result of election came out.

In all, I believe the Internet does not control the flow of information; instead, we created out own bubble—information is always there, the Internet is just trying to serve us better, makes it easier for us to find out the information we tend to look at. According example in the lecture that because Praiser tend to click on the links shared by his liberal friends on Facebook more often, slowly Facebook eliminates the links shared by his conservative friends, I personally indicate that Praiser could have go in to his conservative friends’ page and then read those links if he really wish to—the information does not go away, it is Praiser’s frequent choices on liberal links lead to the disappearance of the other links. Therefore, I believe every person has a different filter bubble created on their own, and there is no reason for us to blame the Internet when we make our own choices on what too see what to not see.

Image from Medium