04 September 2011

619

“A squirrel dying in your front yard may be more relevant to your interests right now than people dying in Africa.”
(Mark Zuckerberg)


Well, this isn't exactly new(s). In fact, when I googled (yes, I still google) for Zuckerberg's quote at the beginning of this presentation, I found bunch of links that referred to this video instead of the quotation origin. Looks like it came from David Kirkpatrick's The Facebook Effect, the book that was used as the basis of David Fincher's The Social Network. I actually pictured the obnoxious Jesse Eisenberg's Zuckerberg saying that.

Where was I?

Oh yeah, the filter bubble. I and I guess everyone that ever uses Google or Yahoo or Facebook (so basically everybody) had suspected it for quite sometimes. When Google started localized its search a few years ago (redirecting to google.co.id automatically when you're in Indonesia), it started annoying me but not as much. I actually quite welcome Facebook's top post thingy. I also don't really mind Google snooping my email *gasp*, that's the price I pay for the excellent email service. But when it starts deciding what I want to know, well, that's a wee bit too far.

These guys 'cracked' EdgeRank, the algorithm that Facebook use to decide which friends you interact most (i.e. who's you're secretly stalking). They've warned that the result can be quite embarassing. It is. Apparently I'm so narcissist that I stalk myself :D
So how much does it matter? I don't know. I suppose it does have potential to alienate you from the world, in the sense that you only see dead squirrels and forget about people dying. Eli Pariser offers 10 things you can do to pop your bubble, but if you read them you'll notice that what make the bubble are the things that make your browsing experience convenient. So yeah, maybe the most important thing is to be aware of the bubble's existence. And if you're searching for, I don't know, current news on Obama's foreign policy or financial crisis or whatever, comparing your Google search result to DuckDuckGo's maybe important as well. Not so much if you're searching for cheese cake recipe or Syahrini's latest catchphrase. Or is it?

3 komentar:

  1. hah walah gimana cara liat ini???

    BalasHapus
  2. eh iya dah bisa deng cuma ngedrag gamnbar itu hiiii iya scaarryy.... ketauan... haha tapi Rani diluar 10 besar yan gw stalking hehe

    BalasHapus