5 ms·

Wouldn't these "goggles" have exactly this effect? Instead of being silently lulled into the bubble by "the algorithm", users explicitly dig their own hole from

by dusted 5y ago

Wouldn't these "goggles" have exactly this effect? Instead of being silently lulled into the bubble by "the algorithm", users explicitly dig their own hole from which they can be certain never to cast eye upon an opposing idea.

aeternum 5y ago
As they describe in the paper, "at least the choice will be a conscious one". If someone wants a wide variety of sources and opposing ideas, there will be a goggle for that. If someone wants only anti-vax articles, there will probably be one for that too. This is probably much better than what currently happens, where search engines become personalized but users don't realize it. That anti-vax person might think they are searching the whole web when google has quietly flagged them as a user who enjoys anti-vax articles and continues suggesting those sites, taking them further down the rabbit hole.
- KennyBlanken 5y ago
  > This is probably much better than what currently happens, where search engines become personalized but users don't realize it. That anti-vax person might think they are searching the whole web when google has quietly flagged them as a user who enjoys anti-vax articles and continues suggesting those sites, taking them further down the rabbit hole. ...what the what. Did you just casually declare that Google is feeding people search results tailored to their political worldview? Because if so, you need to actually come up with something to support that sort of claim.
  - kwhitefoot 5y ago
    No, they suggested that Google tailors results to the things related to the hits that you follow. His example was political but it was just that, an example.
  - hetspookjee 5y ago
    How could you possibly differentiate an extremely personalized profile, and a political worldview for that matter?
  - jgilias 5y ago
    You're one of today's lucky 10000! [1] Look up Google personalized search [2]. I guess only Google insiders know for sure what's the extent to which your search results get personalized, but it's common knowledge that this happens. It'd be also interesting to find out if they somehow try to reduce the personalization when it comes to 'political' interests. I'd wager that the answer is no. And of course it's not just Google. Facebook and Twitter too. And probably every site with some kind of a feed trying to keep you engaged. 1. https://xkcd.com/1053/ https://xkcd.com/1053/ 2. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Personalized_Search https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Personalized_Search
  - southerntofu 5y ago
    So there's two things to consider: 1) Everything is political, and so are search results and suggestions 2) Personalized results/suggestions, moreover, tend to fit the perceived political views of the user (from the algorithm's perspective) Google and Youtube (like many others) are well-known to have pushed neo-fascist and conspirationist propaganda to random bystanders (Alex Jones or Trump in the USA, Dieudonné or Soral in France) because their "controversial" viewpoints generate more user engagement. Likewise, Google search often promotes white/christian-supremacist "news" websites like FDeSouche in the top5 results for random queries. Then, there's personalized recommendations. Once you've clicked one of these results, Google's algos will deem you interested in that kind of content, and suddenly it's impossible to avoid that bubble. It will keep recommending the same sites/channels everywhere you go, for months. That's why clicking "critically" on a link because you're curious what an "opposite side" has to say is a dangerous enterprise with recommendation algos: you'll be subtly yet persistently exposed to their propaganda ecosystem as a result. I would personally welcome "Goggles" as a positive change. I often know precisely what i'm looking for (an article i saw a few years back), but stupid ranking algorithms make it impossible to find in the stream of information. There's not a one-size-fits-all algo that's going to please everyone: decentralizing this power is the only suitable way, in my humble opinion.
    - cpr 5y ago
      Google and Youtube (like many others) are well-known to have pushed neo-fascist and conspirationist propaganda to random bystanders (Alex Jones or Trump in the USA, Dieudonné or Soral in France) because their "controversial" viewpoints generate more user engagement. Right up until they ban them entirely.
      - NoraCodes 5y ago
        I wonder what the intended tone is here. I would argue that you're exactly right. Google wants to have their cake and eat it too - they want engagement through rage and unreality, but they don't want to be seen as enabling that kind of thing, so they do performative and largely useless measures like banning people who have large following elsewhere and putting Wikipedia links under Flat Earth articles, but don't actually address the core problem: that they make more money when people get angry for no reason, and thus they have to incentivize that kind of art and "journalism" on their platform. We see this from the other side every year come Pride; companies put rainbow shit all over their sites while maintaining LGBTQ+ exclusive practices because they don't want to lose their bigoted customers.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
spinningslate 5y ago
I wondered this too, though the sibling comments make good counterpoints. I tend to look to nature for inspiration in thorny problems. For this one - essentially confirmation bias - genetic mutation seems an attractive metaphor. That is: there's always a bit of randomness thrown in. That could be dialled up/tuned to always include some contrarian answers. I don't expect we'll all return to the great debating chambers of the past, but it'd be an interesting experiment at least: what would happen if every anti-vax search result included something on the benefits?
- southerntofu 5y ago
  Why not let people have their own worldviews? Don't you believe the benefits of self-organized communities far outweigh the downsides? I'd much rather have 10 000 different communities who don't agree on anything, than have a strong hegemonic culture stepping on every disagreeing voice, as we currently have in most countries.
dazc 5y ago
Would you rather dig your own hole or find, at some point in time, you've actually been living in one?
- soundnote 5y ago
  Better start believing in hole stories.
- dusted 5y ago
  I'd rather not have to chose between two broken systems. I don't believe choice is good in this case. I don't think it's good that we can whitelist or blacklist parts of the world from ever entering our minds. Sure, there are lots of places that I know of, that I don't visit because I find them offensive. But sometimes they show up anyway, and while I most often won't agree with their views, I appreciate being reminded that they exist.
- kiryin 5y ago
  I'd rather not fall for the false dichotomy at all, and instead have the algorithm ensure that I won't end up in any sort of hole whatsoever, by choice or otherwise.
  - hetspookjee 5y ago
    Well, what about some kind of (private) program that runs on top of your set of goggles, and would tell you that your set of goggles that you frequent happens to slice and dice only tiny of the entire dataset and thus will hint to you that you're peering into holes. I think this paper is great in delivering a first solution to this space. Sure it's not perfect but atleast miles better than an opaque box.
  - southerntofu 5y ago
    We humans tend to live in our "holes" quite comfortably. You may not realize it, but there's quite a lot of "invisible" social codes and expectations involved in human interactions with your surroundings, and these codes are far from universal. Whether you believe in God(s), whether you trust the police, whether you're for community autonomy and collective ownership or wage slavery and private property, for jealousy or free love... There's so many ways to live and for every individual, most of them will seem alien. When the "hole" is big enough and is crushing other holes with its cultural hegemony (eg. industrial capitalism) then it's harder to realize it's here in the first place, like in the movie Matrix ;)

by dusted 5y ago

aeternum 5y ago

As they describe in the paper, "at least the choice will be a conscious one". If someone wants a wide variety of sources and opposing ideas, there will be a goggle for that. If someone wants only anti-vax articles, there will probably be one for that too. This is probably much better than what currently happens, where search engines become personalized but users don't realize it. That anti-vax person might think they are searching the whole web when google has quietly flagged them as a user who enjoys anti-vax articles and continues suggesting those sites, taking them further down the rabbit hole.

KennyBlanken 5y ago
> This is probably much better than what currently happens, where search engines become personalized but users don't realize it. That anti-vax person might think they are searching the whole web when google has quietly flagged them as a user who enjoys anti-vax articles and continues suggesting those sites, taking them further down the rabbit hole. ...what the what. Did you just casually declare that Google is feeding people search results tailored to their political worldview? Because if so, you need to actually come up with something to support that sort of claim.
- kwhitefoot 5y ago
  No, they suggested that Google tailors results to the things related to the hits that you follow. His example was political but it was just that, an example.
- hetspookjee 5y ago
  How could you possibly differentiate an extremely personalized profile, and a political worldview for that matter?
- jgilias 5y ago
  You're one of today's lucky 10000! [1] Look up Google personalized search [2]. I guess only Google insiders know for sure what's the extent to which your search results get personalized, but it's common knowledge that this happens. It'd be also interesting to find out if they somehow try to reduce the personalization when it comes to 'political' interests. I'd wager that the answer is no. And of course it's not just Google. Facebook and Twitter too. And probably every site with some kind of a feed trying to keep you engaged. 1. https://xkcd.com/1053/ https://xkcd.com/1053/ 2. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Personalized_Search https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Personalized_Search
- southerntofu 5y ago
  So there's two things to consider: 1) Everything is political, and so are search results and suggestions 2) Personalized results/suggestions, moreover, tend to fit the perceived political views of the user (from the algorithm's perspective) Google and Youtube (like many others) are well-known to have pushed neo-fascist and conspirationist propaganda to random bystanders (Alex Jones or Trump in the USA, Dieudonné or Soral in France) because their "controversial" viewpoints generate more user engagement. Likewise, Google search often promotes white/christian-supremacist "news" websites like FDeSouche in the top5 results for random queries. Then, there's personalized recommendations. Once you've clicked one of these results, Google's algos will deem you interested in that kind of content, and suddenly it's impossible to avoid that bubble. It will keep recommending the same sites/channels everywhere you go, for months. That's why clicking "critically" on a link because you're curious what an "opposite side" has to say is a dangerous enterprise with recommendation algos: you'll be subtly yet persistently exposed to their propaganda ecosystem as a result. I would personally welcome "Goggles" as a positive change. I often know precisely what i'm looking for (an article i saw a few years back), but stupid ranking algorithms make it impossible to find in the stream of information. There's not a one-size-fits-all algo that's going to please everyone: decentralizing this power is the only suitable way, in my humble opinion.
  - cpr 5y ago
    Google and Youtube (like many others) are well-known to have pushed neo-fascist and conspirationist propaganda to random bystanders (Alex Jones or Trump in the USA, Dieudonné or Soral in France) because their "controversial" viewpoints generate more user engagement. Right up until they ban them entirely.
    - NoraCodes 5y ago
      I wonder what the intended tone is here. I would argue that you're exactly right. Google wants to have their cake and eat it too - they want engagement through rage and unreality, but they don't want to be seen as enabling that kind of thing, so they do performative and largely useless measures like banning people who have large following elsewhere and putting Wikipedia links under Flat Earth articles, but don't actually address the core problem: that they make more money when people get angry for no reason, and thus they have to incentivize that kind of art and "journalism" on their platform. We see this from the other side every year come Pride; companies put rainbow shit all over their sites while maintaining LGBTQ+ exclusive practices because they don't want to lose their bigoted customers.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

spinningslate 5y ago

I wondered this too, though the sibling comments make good counterpoints. I tend to look to nature for inspiration in thorny problems. For this one - essentially confirmation bias - genetic mutation seems an attractive metaphor. That is: there's always a bit of randomness thrown in. That could be dialled up/tuned to always include some contrarian answers. I don't expect we'll all return to the great debating chambers of the past, but it'd be an interesting experiment at least: what would happen if every anti-vax search result included something on the benefits?

southerntofu 5y ago
Why not let people have their own worldviews? Don't you believe the benefits of self-organized communities far outweigh the downsides? I'd much rather have 10 000 different communities who don't agree on anything, than have a strong hegemonic culture stepping on every disagreeing voice, as we currently have in most countries.

dazc 5y ago

Would you rather dig your own hole or find, at some point in time, you've actually been living in one?

soundnote 5y ago
Better start believing in hole stories.
dusted 5y ago
I'd rather not have to chose between two broken systems. I don't believe choice is good in this case. I don't think it's good that we can whitelist or blacklist parts of the world from ever entering our minds. Sure, there are lots of places that I know of, that I don't visit because I find them offensive. But sometimes they show up anyway, and while I most often won't agree with their views, I appreciate being reminded that they exist.
kiryin 5y ago
I'd rather not fall for the false dichotomy at all, and instead have the algorithm ensure that I won't end up in any sort of hole whatsoever, by choice or otherwise.
- hetspookjee 5y ago
  Well, what about some kind of (private) program that runs on top of your set of goggles, and would tell you that your set of goggles that you frequent happens to slice and dice only tiny of the entire dataset and thus will hint to you that you're peering into holes. I think this paper is great in delivering a first solution to this space. Sure it's not perfect but atleast miles better than an opaque box.
- southerntofu 5y ago
  We humans tend to live in our "holes" quite comfortably. You may not realize it, but there's quite a lot of "invisible" social codes and expectations involved in human interactions with your surroundings, and these codes are far from universal. Whether you believe in God(s), whether you trust the police, whether you're for community autonomy and collective ownership or wage slavery and private property, for jealousy or free love... There's so many ways to live and for every individual, most of them will seem alien. When the "hole" is big enough and is crushing other holes with its cultural hegemony (eg. industrial capitalism) then it's harder to realize it's here in the first place, like in the movie Matrix ;)