Attention: 
Did you know that Facebook and Google were filtering the results you get? It’s true. This means that results you get may be completely different from results that your friends, your neighbors, your adversaries, people of different ages, different demographics, different locales and countries get. This is a scary thought to me.
Essentially what is happening: If I am a right-wing or left-wing person who only searches for right-wing or left-wing ideas, this is what I will find. This is what will be presented to me. This is what is reinforced in me as: Truth. I take that idea back that ‘this is scary to me’ and want to replace it with: THIS IS TERRIFYING TO ME!!
Proof:
Watch this video to understand more:
Strategy:
I am not going to repost this post from The Filter Bubble, but they explain main ideas for how to combat search result filtering:
- Burn your cookies.
- Erase your web history.
- Tell Facebook to keep your data private.
- Hide your birthday.
- Turn off targeted ads, and tell the stalking sneakers to buzz off.
- Go incognito.
- Or better yet, go anonymous.
- Depersonalize your browser.
- Tell Google and Facebook to make it easier to see and control your filters.
- Tell Congress you care.
I would add:
- Compare friend results – like you saw in the video
- Network through places like Twitter around the world and ask to compare results from people outside of your sphere of thinking – Try to think what you search for and like and choose the opposite #tag instead – for example, if you are a Republican and always search #Republican, try #Democrat instead, and vice versa. If you search #Vanilla, try #Chocolate. Connect with new people from the other side of your views, your searches, and your beliefs.
- Start searching things you don’t normally search – Try to trick these algorithms. (I don’t know if this is possible, but it’s worth a try)
education | technology | design 