Google tracks us, vast websites track us and endless online advertisers stalk us. When advertisers identify us, putting us into market segments and showing us different products with different prices, we may get unfair discounts and expose our preferences. But these losses are just on the superficial level. Why don't we put the privacy issue aside temporarily, as personalization, which sticks you in an ever-narrowing version of yourself, has even more severe power on people.
In the reading piece, Jeffrey Rosen mentioned the “Filter Bubble” problem. Here is the TED talk, “Beware Online Filter Bubbles,” given by Eli Pariser. Too much personalization makes people isolated in their own world. People can only see what advertisers assume what they want to see without noticing something important that they may need to know. If people only discover a fragmentary world and perceive ideas in partial side, how is society going to be? This contradicts what media is suppose to function as.
This is terrific, Amy, and a perfect companion to the pieces you're reading for tomorrow.
ReplyDeleteI find it so disturbing that everything we do on the Internet is tracked and allows companies to get to know us through our searches. Although it is our choice to search things, I can't help but feel that it is an invasion of our pastime and leisure. For once, I would just like to know that what I put out there does not have to go toward a profile of things that I like and am interested in.
ReplyDeleteI had seen this video awhile back and I completely forgot about it until we talked about the articles in class, but thanks for bringing this back up. One thing that really really struck me throughout it all was how sheltered and isolated we are despite the fact that we're supposed to be more connected to a global community. That's the very thing that the internet triumphs upon. It's truly saddening how easily they isolate us, and how easily we're so passive to it. This personalization is masquerading as the best thing for us, yet it's harming us globally. Similar to the article we read about not being in touch with the environmental changes, this acts in the same way. We can't possibly be in tune with global issues and proactive about how to deal with them when we aren't even aware of them. My question is how do we change the tides of these "news" sources, how can we make them responsible for the ethics behind this again?
ReplyDeleteWhile I agree with some aspects of your argument, I must disagree to say that we are completely aware of environmental issues. Now, the issue is that we completely ignore them because of the mentality of "one person would not really make a difference," which is a mentality that most people have.
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