TED Talks:

excellent clip, love TED.

yeah that's pretty fucked up. Scary thing is i hadn't really noticed the gradual change in google's search function over the years i've used it. Needs to at least be an option to put google into a non filtering mode.

Hm I never really noticed this either but it does make complete sense. I think most of the idea behind filtering your results based on what you are looking for is more of a marketing ploy for you to come back and use the service. If you search google all the time and find results that you intend on finding then you will likely use google again a 2nd time around. The same applies to other websites and companies as well. From a marketing/economic standpoint, this is very favorable for the businesses as their approval ratings and customer satisfaction rates are higher overall. I do think it's important not to isolate yourself from the topics you don't like and to be exposed to new ideas. However, I would say a vast majority of internet users don't want this. Many people log on just to check their social connections (facebook), sports news (ESPN), or just play games online. Although the internet's original intention was to provide a connection to others and promote new ideas, research, and innovation, it has evolved to the point where a majority of the internet is strictly based for entertainment purposes. The average person that seeks enjoyment does not want to run into random articles on stuff they don't care about.

I do agree with the speakers point and I do think it is important to get some variety. I'm just trying to give some logical counter arguments as to why the current way it works benefits both businesses and needs based consumers. After watching the video, I am sure 99% of people do not know this occurs online and although it may be apparent now that this system occurs would you had felt terrible had you continued to use the internet without this knowledge? No you wouldn't. It follows the idea of what one doesn't know won't hurt him/her.

im gonna end up with nothing but funny pictures and asian porn

On October 24 2011 14:02 byrnesam wrote: im gonna end up with nothing but funny pictures and asian porn

LOL

very good video
sounds realy fucked up if you think about it.. and I never noticed it

super good video

An austrian law student made a site called "Europe versus facebook". I guess he explains way better that I would, so if you want to know a bit more about data that facebook collects and keeps even if you delete it, check this : http://europe-v-facebook.org/
It is Europe and not the world, because accounts made in Europe depend on the facebook based in Ireland and thus to european rights which is far diferent from US law (as an example) about privacy.

+1 to the love ted talks and its crazy i never noticed it either, but i'm guessing very few of us really did

yeah this is known fact
for example, everytime i google something i get wikipedia result in top5, since i use wikipedia a lot.

if u dont like the way google search is operating u can use this http://www.ixquick.com/
try it and u will see how different result you will get when u search the same thing.

Read more about this here http://www.ixquick.com/eng/protect-privacy.html

Hmm it's interesting but I don't think either the Google or Facebook examples are particuarly conclusive on the extent of filtering going on. I'm also not convinced that for most people this kind of filtering is bad.

For the Facebook example I think it's important to state how many friends this guy has. If he is a friend whore and has like 1000+ there isn't enough time to read all news feed items. So it makes sense for Facebook to tailor it over time to exactly what you are more inclined to read. He says that he reads liberal and conservative articles but the ratio might be heavily skewed far more than what he actually realises. The problem is he doesn't provide any quantifiable evidence as to what exactly is going on and in what context. Which I think is kind of annoying.

As for the Google example he just has his friends use Egypt. It's a pretty broad search criteria. If Daniel spends time looking up holidays etc and Scott spends his time reading news articles why shouldn't Google make it more efficient for those users individual preferences. I would of liked to of seen a much more specific search term like "GDP of Egypt" or "Protests in Egypt over Mubarak" and see the results. Also I would like to know if Google is just ordering them for you as user preferences dictate or if it's a totally different search result (like top 50 are different).

Even if you look past the point that this, in a way, serves as sort of a bad precedent for a form of censorship almost, I just dont like the fact that they are collecting all this data about us behind our backs. What if I dont want google to know my political ideologies and store all this data about me to be used as they see fit. And it can only get worse with time, personalized marketing as disgusting as it can be is nothing compared to what the government can do with this much information on every single person...

Its a basic form of control. Its kind of agaisnt the very fundamentals of the internet ... this is quite fucked up

one of the bloggers posted link of a page with a lot of ted talks (torrents ?) Anyone have that link ?

On October 25 2011 14:54 EvilSky wrote: What if I dont want google to know my political ideologies...

im far more concerned about them knowing what i wank over

HighCard posted it :
https://spreadsheets.google.com/sprea...c=false&rowsperpage=250&pli=1

On October 26 2011 02:40 byrnesam wrote: Show nested quote + On October 25 2011 14:54 EvilSky wrote: What if I dont want google to know my political ideologies... im far more concerned about them knowing what i wank over

Oh please thats the only reason Im polite when calling my fucking ISP instead of savagely yelling at them, its always in the air that they know what disgusting stuff you beat off to.