Below is a TED talk by Eli Pariser on what he terms as "Filter Bubbles"; it’s a nine-minute presentation and definitely worth the watch.
Filter bubbles in a nutshell are personalized search results that include results the search engine thinks are relevant to you; the filter part is the results have things stripped out of them you didn’t ask to be stripped out. Eli considers this a rather important problem and I agree with him 100%.
There’s a few interesting points the video doesn’t cover.
Do personalized search results need to be "trained"?
Yes, they do – by you, and it works very well. However when doing so you’re selling your soul in the process.
The best way to use personalized search results is by attaching every search you make to an account hosted by that service. On Google, this means using a Google account. On Bing, it means having a Windows Live account. On Yahoo!, a Yahoo! account. You get the idea.
Using the search of your choice, you purposely stay logged into your account on that respective service. Over time as data is collected, each search you make becomes more relevant to your interests. You will see more localized things that matter to you, suggestions based on previous searches you made, and so on.
The good part is that you’re "training the engine" that will ultimately make your internet search experience better. The evil part is that you’re telling a faceless corporation every single thing you search for, attached to your name, location and everything else in your account for said service.
My personal opinion: I do not want a search engine to personalize anything for me unless I specifically tell it to via an account for that engine. Otherwise I want all my results sent "raw" for lack of a better term. That’s not the way search works right now, and it sucks because all the major engines keep filtering out stuff you’d otherwise want to see. This filter-out stuff I’m referring to aren’t shock sites or anything morally objectionable, but rather the filters are solely doing this based what it thinks are relevant to me based on things like location via my IP address. For example, I have seen results for Florida-based stuff even for search terms that had absolutely nothing to do with the state I’m in. That’s a fail right there because the engine is injecting crap into my results that I don’t even want there – and that’s not even with an account. All of that is bad and forces me to go though pages of results to find what I wanted instead of having what I was looking for right on the first page.
I’m not against custom tailored search results per individual, because it’s not a bad idea. The point however is that they should only be offered by those who ask for it and not shove it down our throats whether we want it there or not.
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