The filter bubbles

Eli Pariser's video explains the effects of filter bubbles, which reduces our opportunities to expose to diverse information and confine us to restricted information. This video opened my eyes to the extent to which search engine limits our horizons to see this world from different perspectives. I do find this effect, filter bubbles, prevails while I was using search engine; however, I have not thought of how huge impact of this effect is. Pariser talked about the personalized results on Google, which quite surprised me. I think those "chosen" information shown on Google may somehow help users to gain a deeper understanding on what they are interested in and what they are fond of; However, it fails to take the importance of diverse news and information into consideration. Consequently, people may end up with information junk food instead of balanced information diet.

Mariella's article, Facebook: if your feed is an echo chamber, you need more friends, points out that the filter bubble effect is real, but it does not play that big of a part. However, I do believe that filter bubble effect plays an important role in our life. For example, I remembered few years ago I googled and watched a video about same sex marriage in Taiwan. After viewing that video, I found some recommended articles which are related to proponents of same sex marriage popped up on my laptop. From my experience of using search bar, I think google does filter what kinds of information that users are going to get and plays a big role when we are using the Internet.

Another article, Facebook redesigns trending topics in its war on filter bubbles, seems to show that Facebook takes an active role in combating filter bubbles.  Nonetheless, as a constant user of Facebook, I have not found any difference on my Facebook trending topics. For example, though hurricane in Puerto Rico is a headline news for these few days, I have not seen any of these related trending topics shown in my Facebook. Instead, trending topics are mostly about news of animals which is the one that I am usually paying attention to. To sum up, users may get information merely based on their own preferences without gaining contradictory information due to the filer bubble effect, which results in isolating from diverse viewpoints and staying in our own bubble communities.