History of Filter Bubbles

The term, filter bubbles, was coined by Eli Pariser in his book by the same name. In 2011, Pariser presented his Ted Talk "Beware online 'filter bubbles'", warning people that there is a negative outcome to being trapped in "filter bubbles", which is what almost every web companies use to tailor their services according to our personal tastes. He suggests that the "filter bubbles" are stopping users from being exposed to information that is opposite to their own opinions, thus narrowing down their worldview.

Pariser referred to the concept of filter bubbles in many other terms such as "personal ecosystem of information that's been catered by ...algorithms", "ideological frames", "figurative sphere surrounding you as you search the Internet", etc. He criticized Google and Facebook for having invisible algorithms that may block our exposure to new, opposing information, limits our capability to adapt to unfamiliar conditions. Pariser gave out a specific example in which one of the users searched Google for "BP" and got investment news about British Petroleum, while another user who searched the same thing got a result of Deepwater Horizon oil spill. These contents were shown to be "strikingly different".

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