Bubble filter (filter bubble), as well as 10 steps, how to escape from captivity of their interests
Mark Zuckerberg once asked about the importance of a news feed on Facebook, why is it key and always displayed on the main page? To which the founder of Facebook replied: "A squirrel dying in your tree may be much more relevant to you at the moment than people dying in Africa ."
The following describes the situation in which we are all on the Internet, based on the idea of ​​relevance, and also gives an answer to the question of why we are all in captivity of our interests, in the so-called. “Filter Bubble”. I will also give 10 tips that I use to go beyond the limits of the filter bubble - i.e. break free from the captivity of their interests.
To clarify, we take a typical example - your Facebook page (VKontakte, underline the necessary). In the news feed you have friends who are obsessed with cooking and recipes who post on their page new gourmet recipes from the best chefs in Moscow.
In addition to culinary specialists, you have friends who are interested in politics and financial reports, who in their pages spread the latest news on the state of the dual-currency basket and the appearance of Dmitry Medvedev's page on Facebook.
')
All these news (statuses and updates from your friends on the page) are displayed in your news feed. As usual, you are viewing the news of friends. In this case, you are more interested in financial and political news, and you often follow the links in these news. And what is strange - after a while in your news feed you will not see any more messages from your culinary friends ! At all. Even if they write about politics and financial events!
Facebook remembers what you click on in the news feed , and the next time it gives you only the news that this social network finds interesting to you, even without consulting with you !
But where else does such invisible filtering of information on the Internet practice? Google does the same!
Ask five of your friends to type in Google (Yandex, you need to underline) any word: for example, Moscow, and compare the results. Even with the naked eye it will be seen that search results are different. And this result will be even in the case when the search is carried out simultaneously! Do not believe? Check it out!
Even if you log out of your Google account, you will not leave the filter bubble - 57 types of personalization (individualization) will remain - the parameters that the search engine will process: computer type, browser type, your location, history of visiting sites, etc., and will give you information based on these parameters.
Think for a second: standard Google no longer exists! And it is almost imperceptible for each of us, because we do not see the results of the search results of other people!
And this is not just about Google and Facebook. Many companies around the world use personalization: Yahoo News, Google News, The Huffington Post, The Washington Post, The New York Times - they all use personalization. Everything on the Internet is developing in the direction of personalization, and ultimately it will only show us what it considers, we are interested, and not what we need !
These words are confirmed by the former head of Google, Eric Schmidt: " It will be very difficult for people to see or acquire something that one way or another was not chosen for them ."
If we take all these services, their personalization algorithms and the issuance of personalized information and the filters themselves, we get the following picture, the so-called filter bubble or filter bubble where you are in the center.
This filter bubble is your universe in which you live on the Internet. And what will appear in this filter bubble will depend on who you are and what you do, i.e. Bubble filter information will always be based on your professional, personal interests. But the problem is that you do not decide what information to receive on the Internet . And even more important - you will not even see the information about what remains behind the filter bubble .
He violates our “normal information ration” by bringing us information only about what entertains us. Netflix research has shown that people are much more willing to consume a mass information product (talk shows, reality shows, mediocre comedies, gossip, intrigue-scandals, investigations, etc.) for consumption rather than information about science, politics, culture, and education. , medicine ...
What is the principle of such filters? Filters monitor where you click first (it’s likely to be the Complete Works of Heinrich Heine , but rather, Scarlett Johanson and Keira Knightley's nude photo ), remember this choice and show you the same information in the future.
And what to do? How to break out of the bubble filters?
But to begin with, the sad news is that the “magic pill” does not exist. Our “opponents” (Facebook, Google, VKontakte, Yandex, Yahoo News, Google News, Huffington Post, Washington Post, New York Times, etc.) use filters against which the antidote has not yet appeared.
But not all is lost yet. The following are recommendations that I use myself.
If you want to see outside your bubble filter, you need to periodically clear cookies in your browser. Below are the menu items for browsers where to clear cookies. An example for Internet Explorer in the screenshot below.
If we use Gmail, Yandex.Mail, Yandex.Maps, Google Maps, Google Analytics, Yandex.Webmaster, Yandex.Metrica, Google Webmasters, AdWords, AdSense or any other service from search engines, we use a single personalized profile in number and search. The sure sign of the profile is your username at the top of the browser.
The principle of Google / Yandex search is based on our web search history - search engines remember the list of sites that we visited using Google / Yandex search. Such a search history may even last several years.
Memorizing the history of our search dooms each of us to repeat the same story over and over again and receive new search results based on what you entered earlier - this is the meaning of the filter bubble.
To delete search data for Google:
How to delete the web search history for Yandex I could not find the information (apparently, this possibility is not provided for mercenary purposes), but I learned how to stop saving this story, which is also important:
You can, of course, create a new Yandex profile and immediately follow the steps to stop saving the search.
This company has made the most of the companies in the world to make the once private data publicly available! Moreover, earlier information about clicking the Like button was private, now this information is publicly available and Facebook has forbidden changing this setting!
I didn’t find any information about VKontakte, but I’m pretty sure that they also distribute information about our clicks on “Like”.
Moreover, since Facebook users do not even know about it, information about their likes is collected by commercial organizations (for example, Rapleaf ), filtered and sold to companies in a convenient way for big money! Moreover, these reports contain detailed information about each of us: our full names, gender, age, country, city, interests and all-all-like likes that we have ever clicked on the Internet!
The main rule: if you don’t want to make something public, never click Facebook Like (VKontakte) on this!
But that's not all! When you are logged in to Facebook (VKontakte, underline the appropriate), social. The network can transmit information to other sites! To disable the transmission of information about you to third-party sites, follow these steps:
5. (optional) Go back, select the Edit Settings button to the right of the Public Search section.
6. Uncheck Enable public search . This will exclude the issuance of information about you in the search engines.
To set up additional privacy protection, play around the Facebook privacy settings in the Privacy Settings . I set the default settings for myself - for friends, " Friends " in the section Control Your Default Privacy .
Your birth date and name are very helpful for companies like Raplief to identify you exactly. For example, you have a list of likes from different Petrov Ivanovs (the example with different Vadims Hot does not suit here) - there are hundreds or thousands of people with such names, it is difficult to determine who is. But your date of birth comes to the rescue, which in 99.99% of cases uniquely identifies you.
So hide your date of birth in social networks. Well, or at least hide the year of birth (as a rule, this is done in your social network profile).
Use nicknames instead of real full names wherever you can (Facebook, VKontakte, MoiMir, Odnoklassniki, Twitter, etc.). By this we will spoil the “business” very much, which is built on our efforts and we don’t get a penny for it!
Incognito mode eliminates the use of cookies and you will see almost impersonal information (search results).
Why almost? Some companies (for example, Google) store data about you not only on your computer as cookies, but also on their servers.
Every browser now allows you to use incognito mode - so use!
Sites such as Torproject.org and Anonymizer.com allow you to pass all your traffic from all browsers through their servers, effectively deleting even the data that “shines” when using incognito mode.
So, if you use the sites of Google, Yandex, Facebook, VKontakte, turn off cookies and use the incognito mode. Does this mean that these sites do not know who you are? The answer is NO!
As it turned out, every request to download a web page shows these sites a lot of information about our computer and software - and many of these configurations are unique.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) points out such unique data about you here . And they give recommendations on how to make your settings more difficult to track - read here .
For example, write to Facebook so that they either turn off the general availability of information about all your likes, or give you a choice if you would like your information to be passed on to third parties!
Here are the contacts where you can send your wishes about the work of Google and Facebook filters:
Write your wishes and recommendations to the governments of the USA and Russia, so that they forbid these companies with impunity to distribute personal data about you to everyone.
Contacts in the USA:
Contacts in the Russian Federation:
And what is the result? Freedom to search for information on the Internet. That will be enough for me.
I was inspired to write an article from the TED Talks conference video , in which Eli Pariser, author of The Filter Bubble, in 9 minutes talks about the problem of the filter bubble in which each of us is.
Sources: Ted Talks video , thefilterbubble.com , Vadim Zharkikh's blog
The following describes the situation in which we are all on the Internet, based on the idea of ​​relevance, and also gives an answer to the question of why we are all in captivity of our interests, in the so-called. “Filter Bubble”. I will also give 10 tips that I use to go beyond the limits of the filter bubble - i.e. break free from the captivity of their interests.
What is a bubble filter?
To clarify, we take a typical example - your Facebook page (VKontakte, underline the necessary). In the news feed you have friends who are obsessed with cooking and recipes who post on their page new gourmet recipes from the best chefs in Moscow.
In addition to culinary specialists, you have friends who are interested in politics and financial reports, who in their pages spread the latest news on the state of the dual-currency basket and the appearance of Dmitry Medvedev's page on Facebook.
')
All these news (statuses and updates from your friends on the page) are displayed in your news feed. As usual, you are viewing the news of friends. In this case, you are more interested in financial and political news, and you often follow the links in these news. And what is strange - after a while in your news feed you will not see any more messages from your culinary friends ! At all. Even if they write about politics and financial events!
Facebook remembers what you click on in the news feed , and the next time it gives you only the news that this social network finds interesting to you, even without consulting with you !
But where else does such invisible filtering of information on the Internet practice? Google does the same!
Ask five of your friends to type in Google (Yandex, you need to underline) any word: for example, Moscow, and compare the results. Even with the naked eye it will be seen that search results are different. And this result will be even in the case when the search is carried out simultaneously! Do not believe? Check it out!
Even if you log out of your Google account, you will not leave the filter bubble - 57 types of personalization (individualization) will remain - the parameters that the search engine will process: computer type, browser type, your location, history of visiting sites, etc., and will give you information based on these parameters.
Think for a second: standard Google no longer exists! And it is almost imperceptible for each of us, because we do not see the results of the search results of other people!
And this is not just about Google and Facebook. Many companies around the world use personalization: Yahoo News, Google News, The Huffington Post, The Washington Post, The New York Times - they all use personalization. Everything on the Internet is developing in the direction of personalization, and ultimately it will only show us what it considers, we are interested, and not what we need !
These words are confirmed by the former head of Google, Eric Schmidt: " It will be very difficult for people to see or acquire something that one way or another was not chosen for them ."
If we take all these services, their personalization algorithms and the issuance of personalized information and the filters themselves, we get the following picture, the so-called filter bubble or filter bubble where you are in the center.
This filter bubble is your universe in which you live on the Internet. And what will appear in this filter bubble will depend on who you are and what you do, i.e. Bubble filter information will always be based on your professional, personal interests. But the problem is that you do not decide what information to receive on the Internet . And even more important - you will not even see the information about what remains behind the filter bubble .
What bad does the filter bubble give us?
He violates our “normal information ration” by bringing us information only about what entertains us. Netflix research has shown that people are much more willing to consume a mass information product (talk shows, reality shows, mediocre comedies, gossip, intrigue-scandals, investigations, etc.) for consumption rather than information about science, politics, culture, and education. , medicine ...
What is the principle of such filters? Filters monitor where you click first (it’s likely to be the Complete Works of Heinrich Heine , but rather, Scarlett Johanson and Keira Knightley's nude photo ), remember this choice and show you the same information in the future.
And what to do? How to break out of the bubble filters?
But to begin with, the sad news is that the “magic pill” does not exist. Our “opponents” (Facebook, Google, VKontakte, Yandex, Yahoo News, Google News, Huffington Post, Washington Post, New York Times, etc.) use filters against which the antidote has not yet appeared.
But not all is lost yet. The following are recommendations that I use myself.
10 simple steps that will allow you to avoid personalization of information on the Internet
1. Delete all cookies
If you want to see outside your bubble filter, you need to periodically clear cookies in your browser. Below are the menu items for browsers where to clear cookies. An example for Internet Explorer in the screenshot below.
- For Google Chrome: ( Preferences -> Under the Hood -> Content Settings )
- For FireFox: ( Preferences -> Privacy -> Use custom settings for history )
- For Safari: ( Preferences -> Security )
- For Internet Explorer: ( Internet options -> Privacy )
2. Delete your web history
If we use Gmail, Yandex.Mail, Yandex.Maps, Google Maps, Google Analytics, Yandex.Webmaster, Yandex.Metrica, Google Webmasters, AdWords, AdSense or any other service from search engines, we use a single personalized profile in number and search. The sure sign of the profile is your username at the top of the browser.
The principle of Google / Yandex search is based on our web search history - search engines remember the list of sites that we visited using Google / Yandex search. Such a search history may even last several years.
Memorizing the history of our search dooms each of us to repeat the same story over and over again and receive new search results based on what you entered earlier - this is the meaning of the filter bubble.
To delete search data for Google:
- a) Go to the Google homepage
- b) Click on your Name in the upper right corner and go to the " Account Settings " menu
- c) At the very bottom of the page, click on " Looking for previous account settings and a list of Google products? Previous version of Google Accounts "
- d) Click “Edit” (Edit) next to the heading “ My Products ” ( My Products )
- e) Click " Remove Web History Permanently "
How to delete the web search history for Yandex I could not find the information (apparently, this possibility is not provided for mercenary purposes), but I learned how to stop saving this story, which is also important:
- a) Go to Yandex main page
- b) Perform a search on any words, for example, what does the word horsmening mean
- c) In the right corner of the browser under the profile name, click on " Settings " (immediately under the " My Finds " item)
- d) At the very bottom in the " Search history " section, select " Stop recording "
- e) Click " Save and return to search "
You can, of course, create a new Yandex profile and immediately follow the steps to stop saving the search.
3. Hide your personal data on Facebook
This company has made the most of the companies in the world to make the once private data publicly available! Moreover, earlier information about clicking the Like button was private, now this information is publicly available and Facebook has forbidden changing this setting!
I didn’t find any information about VKontakte, but I’m pretty sure that they also distribute information about our clicks on “Like”.
Moreover, since Facebook users do not even know about it, information about their likes is collected by commercial organizations (for example, Rapleaf ), filtered and sold to companies in a convenient way for big money! Moreover, these reports contain detailed information about each of us: our full names, gender, age, country, city, interests and all-all-like likes that we have ever clicked on the Internet!
The main rule: if you don’t want to make something public, never click Facebook Like (VKontakte) on this!
But that's not all! When you are logged in to Facebook (VKontakte, underline the appropriate), social. The network can transmit information to other sites! To disable the transmission of information about you to third-party sites, follow these steps:
- 1. Log in to Facebook. In the upper right corner, click Account , then on Privacy Settings.
- 2. To the right of the Apps and websites section, select Edit your settings.
- 3. Then to the right of the Instant personalization section, click Edit settings . You can see a drop-down video about how cool it is to transfer information about you to third-party sites! Just click Close .
- 4. At the very bottom of the site, uncheck Enable instant personalization on partner websites . This will not allow other sites to use information about you.
5. (optional) Go back, select the Edit Settings button to the right of the Public Search section.
6. Uncheck Enable public search . This will exclude the issuance of information about you in the search engines.
To set up additional privacy protection, play around the Facebook privacy settings in the Privacy Settings . I set the default settings for myself - for friends, " Friends " in the section Control Your Default Privacy .
4. Hide your date of birth and use nicknames
Your birth date and name are very helpful for companies like Raplief to identify you exactly. For example, you have a list of likes from different Petrov Ivanovs (the example with different Vadims Hot does not suit here) - there are hundreds or thousands of people with such names, it is difficult to determine who is. But your date of birth comes to the rescue, which in 99.99% of cases uniquely identifies you.
So hide your date of birth in social networks. Well, or at least hide the year of birth (as a rule, this is done in your social network profile).
Use nicknames instead of real full names wherever you can (Facebook, VKontakte, MoiMir, Odnoklassniki, Twitter, etc.). By this we will spoil the “business” very much, which is built on our efforts and we don’t get a penny for it!
5. Turn off targeted advertising.
- For Google Chrome, install the ' Keep My Opt-Outs ' extension
- For IE9, enable the ' Tracking Protection ' option
- For Firefox, turn off the ' Do Not Track ' option
- For Safari, promised to release the option 'Tracking Protection' this summer
6. Use incognito mode in browser
Incognito mode eliminates the use of cookies and you will see almost impersonal information (search results).
Why almost? Some companies (for example, Google) store data about you not only on your computer as cookies, but also on their servers.
Every browser now allows you to use incognito mode - so use!
7. Or even better - use anonymous surfing on the Internet.
Sites such as Torproject.org and Anonymizer.com allow you to pass all your traffic from all browsers through their servers, effectively deleting even the data that “shines” when using incognito mode.
8. Depersonalize your browser.
So, if you use the sites of Google, Yandex, Facebook, VKontakte, turn off cookies and use the incognito mode. Does this mean that these sites do not know who you are? The answer is NO!
As it turned out, every request to download a web page shows these sites a lot of information about our computer and software - and many of these configurations are unique.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) points out such unique data about you here . And they give recommendations on how to make your settings more difficult to track - read here .
9. Write directly to Google and Facebook to give you full control over your personal information.
For example, write to Facebook so that they either turn off the general availability of information about all your likes, or give you a choice if you would like your information to be passed on to third parties!
Here are the contacts where you can send your wishes about the work of Google and Facebook filters:
10. Write to the governments of countries whose laws are subject to Google, Facebook, Yandex, VKontakte, etc.
Write your wishes and recommendations to the governments of the USA and Russia, so that they forbid these companies with impunity to distribute personal data about you to everyone.
Contacts in the USA:
- White House: writerep.house.gov/writerep/welcome.shtml
- Senate: www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm
Contacts in the Russian Federation:
- Send a letter to the President: letters.kremlin.ru
And what is the result? Freedom to search for information on the Internet. That will be enough for me.
I was inspired to write an article from the TED Talks conference video , in which Eli Pariser, author of The Filter Bubble, in 9 minutes talks about the problem of the filter bubble in which each of us is.
Sources: Ted Talks video , thefilterbubble.com , Vadim Zharkikh's blog
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/132191/
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