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Which makes me think... ...would someone be willing to develop a content recommendation engine that filters out all the bullshit on the web? Especially valuable

Which makes me think... ...would someone be willing to develop a content recommendation engine that filters out all the bullshit on the web? Especially valuable would be one that is also immune to "filter bubble" effects.

sametmax 9y ago
Stumble upon was kinda great for that.
gambiting 9y ago
>> that filters out all the bullshit on the web? The problem is that your definition of bullshit might be different than mine, so any filter you come up with will have issues.
- glaberficken 9y ago
  >"your definition of bullshit might be different than mine" Yes of course, but maybe for such a tool we could agree first on a definition of bullshit and try to stick to it?
jerf 9y ago
It is impossible to be immune to filter bubble effects. The only way to be immune is to not filter at all (can't be in a filter bubble if you don't have a filter), but you can't do that. Even keeping up entirely with lil' ol' HN would tax you, and I don't know how many zeros to put in the 0.0000001% but HN is not very much of "the internet". If you think you've got yourself into a situation where you're immune to the filter bubble, that just means you've created one so comfortable that you never get prodded by anything.
alanfalcon 9y ago
I think you have to be exposed to the bullshit. I explicitly follow people on Twitter I strongly disagree with; that sometimes outright outrage and disgust me. I don’t interact with them, but I read what they’re saying and what people in their filter bubble say back to them. That’s my best solution to trying to escape too small a filter bubble of my own.
- nekopa 9y ago
  I do the same, and it started accidentally. I followed someone on twitter who I thought was someone else, and they are hard alt right. After getting some updates from them in my email, I realized my mistake, and went on twitter to unfollow them, and got to reading their feed was was atrocious from my viewpoint, but I saw that it was good to know how the "enemy" was thinking, what their thought process and logic trains are. So I kept following them. At first I stopped in from time to time to get my outrage on (I never interact with them, just read) and to feel smug that I am intellectually superior to them and their followers. But then I realized that if way back, at the very beginning of your thought process you start from a false premise, everything else can follow reasonable and logical methods. It's almost like chaos theory, small differences in the starting position can have vastly outsized differences at the end. I've used this experience to go back and look at my "starting" positions. And I've horrified myself too. So on the whole it's been an enlightening experience. So now I can say that I am firmly on my way to understanding them now (and myself too) even though I diagram with them vehemently. I don't use Facebook much, but if I did, I would want to be able to tell the algorithm "take 50% of what you want to show me based on my preferences and show me the exact opposite"

sametmax 9y ago

Stumble upon was kinda great for that.

gambiting 9y ago

>> that filters out all the bullshit on the web? The problem is that your definition of bullshit might be different than mine, so any filter you come up with will have issues.

glaberficken 9y ago
>"your definition of bullshit might be different than mine" Yes of course, but maybe for such a tool we could agree first on a definition of bullshit and try to stick to it?

jerf 9y ago

It is impossible to be immune to filter bubble effects. The only way to be immune is to not filter at all (can't be in a filter bubble if you don't have a filter), but you can't do that. Even keeping up entirely with lil' ol' HN would tax you, and I don't know how many zeros to put in the 0.0000001% but HN is not very much of "the internet". If you think you've got yourself into a situation where you're immune to the filter bubble, that just means you've created one so comfortable that you never get prodded by anything.

alanfalcon 9y ago

I think you have to be exposed to the bullshit. I explicitly follow people on Twitter I strongly disagree with; that sometimes outright outrage and disgust me. I don’t interact with them, but I read what they’re saying and what people in their filter bubble say back to them. That’s my best solution to trying to escape too small a filter bubble of my own.

nekopa 9y ago
I do the same, and it started accidentally. I followed someone on twitter who I thought was someone else, and they are hard alt right. After getting some updates from them in my email, I realized my mistake, and went on twitter to unfollow them, and got to reading their feed was was atrocious from my viewpoint, but I saw that it was good to know how the "enemy" was thinking, what their thought process and logic trains are. So I kept following them. At first I stopped in from time to time to get my outrage on (I never interact with them, just read) and to feel smug that I am intellectually superior to them and their followers. But then I realized that if way back, at the very beginning of your thought process you start from a false premise, everything else can follow reasonable and logical methods. It's almost like chaos theory, small differences in the starting position can have vastly outsized differences at the end. I've used this experience to go back and look at my "starting" positions. And I've horrified myself too. So on the whole it's been an enlightening experience. So now I can say that I am firmly on my way to understanding them now (and myself too) even though I diagram with them vehemently. I don't use Facebook much, but if I did, I would want to be able to tell the algorithm "take 50% of what you want to show me based on my preferences and show me the exact opposite"