Filter bubble

Ryan Chen

3/13/17

Filter bubble

Filter bubble is a way for websites to customise your search or your experience when you’re surfing the web. The website uses algorithms to guess what information the user would like to see based on user's search history, locations, and passed clicks(Wikipedia). For example if you search on youtube Justin Bieber music a lot you will most likely see stuff like Justin Bieber albums or other Justin Bieber stuff because the website uses algorithms to guess what you want to see based on your search history. People with different interest will more likely to have different things come up when they shop on amazon or search videos on youtube. Filter bubble has been a good way to help people find the things they want to find based on the things they search and not look at the things they don’t search. This can be bad for people because you will never see what other people see from their perspective.

Netflix has used filter bubbles for a while now. Me and my cousin who’s like 11 years old share the same netflix account with me and sometimes the TV shows and movies he watches can effect my filter bubble. So he made his own profile on the netflix account a while ago which doesn’t interfere with my filter bubble anymore. I looked through my netflix profile and I can see the trending now and the popular on netflix videos are completely different between me and my cousin. I have more of sports movies and documentaries while he has more of cartoons like kids show on his profile. Netflix also has an obvious filter bubble where they pull up videos on your screen and says “because you watched …”. I think this is good because if you watched a movie and you didn’t like it you can ignore it or if you watched a movie you really like you can look through that.

I also did some search on amazon on my roommate's computer who is currently a business student. Amazon has the same item on the top of the banner which is an echo speaker starting at $180 for both me and my roommate's computer. When I scrolled down I see the stuff that says inspired by your trends list. I usually don’t use amazon to shop unless I need to buy a textbook so I see that in my amazon there’s math, chemistry, and engineering textbooks. For my roommates amazon I see stuff like business calculus textbooks, proteins, or other workout utilities because he searches those things a lot and I can see that because he workouts everyday.

I did a search on youtube and they have recommended channels, watch it again, and recommended videos for us. I have recommended channels for music channels because I use youtube for music and the watch it again videos I have is how to solve this equation because use youtube to help on my homework if I’m stuck. My roommates youtube filter bubble was cartoon shows like family guy and workout videos because those are the things he watches. As I looked through it I can see I wouldn’t be interested in looking at the things my roommate has on his filter bubble and I rather look at my filter bubble. I personally like filter bubbles now because it doesn’t really bring up the things you aren’t interested and tries to bring up the things you would be interested in looking at.

On pattern on the stones the chapter computers that learn and adapt is kind of like filter bubbles. Computers can learn from their mistakes and correct their own errors (P.121). Filter bubbles correct themselves on what to put on the website depending on your interest from search history. It also takes memory to save your search history so the website knows what you searched in the past. On chapter 6 about memory of how computers can compress something to save memory space. For example if there was a letter that gets overused you would compress it to save data on your computer(p.93).

"Filter Bubble." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 07 Mar. 2017. Web. 13 Mar. 2017.

Daniel Hellis “Pattern on the stones”