Gobbledigoogle, Fakebook and a virtual tsunami of twittering rubbish are but some of Big Brother’s "variable interval reinforcement schedule" tentacles, turning each and every one of us into gormless consumers! In case you've been having problems dreaming (the American Dream) lately, try Ted's rather illuminating food for thought...
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Adam Dachis — Eli Pariser, former director of MoveOn.org, noticed that he and his friends ended up with very different search results when searching for the exact same things. Google (and other sites) are filtering out the stuff you might not like, putting you inside an isolated search filter bubble. This can be a problem, but one that's easily remedied.
As Pariser explains in the video above, Google uses 57 criteria specific to you to filter your results in an effort to make them better and more applicable to you. When you're searching for entertainment this is probably a good thing, but when you're searching for news or any kind of information you might be missing out on results filtered out by things like your location, the browser you're using, and the links you click on. Google isn't alone, as Facebook and Yahoo (among others) pay attention to this kind of information as well. If you want unfiltered results, you've got a couple of options.
The Simple Option
The easiest thing you can do is use a search engine that doesn't filter results. One of our favorites is DuckDuckGo. Aside from providing you with the same results as everyone else, it has a bunch of handy shortcuts. If you want to know a little more about DuckDuckGo's commitment to unfiltered search results and learn a little more about the problem as they see it, check out their presentation.
The "I Still Want Google" Option
If you like Google and wanted to continue using it as your search engine, you just need to prevent it from using information about you. Activating private browsing (or "incognito mode" in Chrome) is a start, because it won't save any cookies, but that doesn't solve every problem as Google uses 57 criteria to choose the results it shows you. In addition to disabling cookies you'll need to disguise your browser agent, mask your IP, and a whole bunch more. Downloading and configuring Tor to browse anonymously might be your best bet since it's pretty tough to hide all this information. If you want to simply avoid this data being saved to your Google account, all you have to do is turn off search personalization (or just stay logged out of your Google account).
All in all, if you're not searching for anything important it shouldn't matter much whether or not your results are filtered, but when you're looking for political opinions or accurate research you might want to use a search engine that isn't trying to show you only what it thinks you want to see.
The Filter Bubble
TED via DuckDuckGo
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