Internet is really innocent but the platforms you are using are ruining the Internet. This is because we are dependent on social media and search results for information on Internet. Companies like Facebook and Google only show what they want to present to you not what you need to see. Google and Facebook come up with daily updated algorithms which makes your search result or news feed more personalized, thus making their process easy to categorize and divide the information in such a way that you will be pushed only to see what is happening in your circle. The technical term used for this “Filter bubble”.
What algorithm is applied?
Algorithms are set of protocols which can be customized to achieve specific goals. With the coming up of new technology, algorithms play a very important role to manipulate ideas and code in such a way that it tracks you with your behavioral search. The best example would be if I search for a T-shirt online, all the ads in my Google search engine and Facebook news feed would be of all the E-Commerce sites who are willing to sell T-shirts to me. Facebook tracks your likes, shared post and the content involved in it and only shows related or similar content to your news feed.
(Technologies such as social media) lets you go off with like-minded people, so you’re not mixing and sharing and understanding other points of view … It’s super important. It’s turned out to be more of a problem than I, or many others, would have expected. –Bill Gates
What is Filter bubble?
When companies like Google and Facebook shows information based on the content you frequently click or share is termed as Filter bubble in simple terms. This is done with the help of tracking they do on you, it can be in the form of cookies or their own internal ways of saving your interest by tracking the pattern you like and share the information on Internet. It’s a kind of corporate censorship which gives rise to fake news getting promoted and going viral on social media. Another example is Instagram, where you see only those images which your friend might have liked and Instagram recommended that to you as recommendations or on the basis of the images you frequently liked on Instagram.
How is this affecting you while using Internet?
Best examples are the US Election results, in which many believe that filter bubble was used to win elections. Politics and brands have already entered into corporate censorship which makes you influenced from the kind of information they share and promote on Internet.
Conclusion
With help of filter bubble fake news gets so much of attention that they are promoting wrong information, and influencing users in a very wrong way. Users judging with the information gathered which is shared by Google or Facebook and deciding what is wrong and right, that is what they want you to think in the way they want. It is really important to stop such things from Internet. I personally think, someone else should not be deciding what you need to see on Internet. Internet is should not be biased.