The Filter Bubble

The filter bubble is the personalized search results an individual receives from a website due to an algorithm. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filter_bubble) According to Andrew Blum in his book Tubes, Google searches and Youtube videos for people consist of direct links and therefore when considering the idea of the filter bubble, you would expect there to be similar ads on Youtube to compensate for the items and topics searched on Google. Filter bubbles vary from person to person based on political and religious views, purchases, search history, and interests represented through videos and music sources. This can have negative effects due to the fact that people may not always see truthful news articles because the filter bubble will provide them articles that agree with the individual's views. However, I decided to test the filter bubble with two of my friends and an incognito window. First, when I went to my Facebook page, the first ad I saw was for the Samsung Galaxy S5. When I went to Youtube, the first ad I received was for Fragrant Jewel bath bombs that come with rings inside of them. Lastly, when I went to Ebay, I was shown a sale on watches and earrings. Out f these three, two of the ads made sense. I own a Samsung S5 mini and have recently been looking at AT&T to see what phones I could upgrade to. In regards to Fragrant Jewels, I use their site a lot ever since a few of my friends shared the ads to my page on Facebook. However, I have not gone searching for jewelry so the Ebay ad seemed a tad off but I guess it could be related to the Fragrant Jewels searches. When I used an incognito window, I still saw a Samsung S5 ad on Facebook, saw an ad for the new Justice League movie on Youtube, and got an ad for Spring fashion on Ebay. I am assuming each of these three are pretty popular among the general population considering many people use smartphones, the Justice League is coming to theaters soon, and Spring is just around the corner. To compare with my friends' ads, they received ads for DiscountTires, Cricket wireless, Valero gas stations, Grammarly, HP computers, and Alienware. Considering both of my friends are male gamers, one of them has a car, and they don't look for beauty products, it makes sense that they received ads that had more to do with their computers and cars instead of bath bombs and jewelry. In The Pattern on the Stone by W. Daniel Hillis on page 78, Algorithms are a fail-safe procedure in that they will always achieve the goal at hand. The filter bubble, being based on an algorithm oriented towards searches and interests, is guaranteed to make suggestions and recommendations related to each individuals' internet history. This happens on Netflix and Hulu with TV shows, Spotify and Pandora for musicians and songs, and even Ebay or Amazon with shopping suggestions. After showing what the filter bubble is, how it works, and that it does exist by providing different results for individuals, I can say that I do believe it is beneficial in the realm of interests and hobbies but is harmful and obstructive when looking at news, media, and research sources because information may be biased and false. In fact, it may be best for people to open an incognito window when they need to search for political and religious issues. As unfortunate as this is that the filter bubble hinders the democracy of free speech and an individuals' right to know what is going on in their community, proper measures need to be taken. I myself pledge to be more cautious of filter bubbles from this day forward.