JoePublisher - 1:08 pm on May 18, 2011 (gmt 0)

The filter bubble? I watched that video with absolute certainty that guy was ‘selling’ something .... What else is a search engine supposed to do?

You can read ‘war and peace’ or read the ‘summary notes’ to find out what happens ... the answer is it depends on your capacity to understand the written word and, importantly, how much time you have available before needing to know the answer.

Filtering by social group is now more possible than ever before in search results. Is this wrong? People chose a ‘filter bubble’ in their choices each and every day without the internet, the most basic example of this social filtering is in which newspaper THEY chose to buy each day, or by how much varied information THEY are willing to expose themselves to ... remove the filter bubble and what do you get? An ‘ideal’ world view? Who’s ideal world view? The information you are presented with is still biased by the people who wrote it or say it.

What if there were no filter bubble? On the internet you are looking for information on a ‘specific thing’, but instead you get a list of ‘everything’ that is connected to that topic. This list is presented to you for you to sort out depending on what it is you actually think is ‘important’ – criteria which will be different for someone else doing that exact same search.

Good luck with that, ten minutes after that happens people will be inventing a search algo to filter the information in a more time efficient manner. Oh wait ...

What is stopping you searching out any ‘foreign’ language reports on a topic? What is stopping you getting ANY information on the web? (if you live in a democratic society, and that is more accurately called censorship and not a filter bubble).

What stops you is not knowing how to filter your search to get specifics, which affects less internet savvy users mainly, and that is called not knowing how to use a tool properly, not censorship. What also stops you? Is it not wanting to go to page 2 on the SERPs? That is called inconvenience, not a filter bubble ...

Why should what you think is important appear in the first 10 results when there are millions of results to process? Why should you not clarify your results and do a second search based on what was returned to you the first time? Or is there some conspiracy keeping you from the info first time?

A ‘filter bubble’ in SEARCH is just ‘laziness’, or ‘sloppiness’ something humans are very good at inflicting upon themselves, particularly those not able to use the tools provided to perform a task properly or with 'skill' ... a search engine can only return the most ‘popular’ results, or the most ‘relevant’ results, or the most ‘varied’ results, based on the search criteria YOU input.

Want to know about the political crisis in Egypt from a search engine? Type in ‘Political Crisis in Egypt’ and not just ‘Egypt’ ... want to know about Michael Jacksons death in the first 24 hours it happened? Type in ‘Michael Jackson Dies’ and not ‘Michael Jackson’ or use the 24 hour filter in the search engine ...

A search engine puts 10 results to a page. What do you think should come first, obviously it should be what most people want, most often, in the time frame they are willing to spend looking for it. Which may or may not meet your expectations depending on what social group you belong to.

So why not filter by social group first (perhaps using Facebook data)? Then let the searcher refine their search if needed, or in real life, as time allows. People continually limit themselves and then blame others ...

Are you talking about a ‘filter bubble’ or 'censorship' based on pre-existing hidden agendas, either economic or political? Two separate things ...