DuckDuckGo: Escape your search engine filter bubble • Hacker News Board

Re: DuckDuckGo: Escape your search engine filter bubble

#151

Post by jerf » Mon, Jun 20, 2011, 7:06 PM UTC

sorbus wrote: post #125

jerf wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Personalization is just a different term for relevant results" Fine. It's not a "filter bubble", it's "excessive personalization", and it's still bad. Arguing about what it's called doesn't do a thing to change whether or not it exists, or whether or not it's a real problem.

Is it actually excessive, though? You're just assuming that it's a real problem without any evidence to support that it is.

Read my last paragraph carefully; I'm just pointing out the name doesn't matter, it's a real phenomena that doesn't go away by changing the name.

My personal stance is actually a great deal more nuanced, which is that you can't not be in a bubble. It is mathematically impossible. Any way of slicing the torrent of information coming at you constitutes a bias. The entire idea of "piercing the bubble" is an instance of English misleading you, it's a concept without a referent. The question is not how to "escape" the bubble, the question is how do we choose our bubble?

Re: DuckDuckGo: Escape your search engine filter bubble

#152

Post by ryanisinallofus » Mon, Jun 20, 2011, 7:12 PM UTC

I spent a few hours using Duck Duck Go before commenting. It's been my Chrome default search for 4 hours.

• The results are less relevant. Bubble or no, it was harder to find things I look for all the time. For example I had to constantly add the word Seattle to my search terms.

• It felt like an old search engine. The results, the display, the choice of Mapquest maps all made me feel like I was using Yahoo or even early Google.

• At first the feeling of not being watched was liberating but I forgot about it very quickly.

I'm going to continue using it as my default search for the lack of tracking but Iv'e already had to go to Google a few times to find what I was looking for. Convenience over privacy right?

Re: DuckDuckGo: Escape your search engine filter bubble

#153

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jun 20, 2011, 7:19 PM UTC

Matt_Cutts wrote: post #143

jannes wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, I don't believe that over-personalization is an issue. (As I already said in another comment.) But here's why some people probably don't like personalization: It's invisible. There is nothing on the results page that tells you whether your results are personalized or not. Sure, you can look at whether the browser is in incognito mode or you can look for some parameter in the URL, but these things require tha…

"But here's why some people probably don't like personalization: It's invisible. There is nothing on the results page that tells you whether your results are personalized or not." Sorry, this is just not the case: we do provide indication on Google's search results page for personalized results. Here's a couple links that talk about how we surface whether results have been personalized: http://www.google.com/support/…

[deleted]

Re: DuckDuckGo: Escape your search engine filter bubble

#154

Post by mquander » Mon, Jun 20, 2011, 7:21 PM UTC

toddh wrote: post #114

mquander wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that it would be cool to expose the different criteria that Google (for instance) is using to help reorder your results, to the degree that those criteria can be discretely identified, but I'm not surprised that they don't; that's a pretty significant portion of their secret sauce they would be publicizing. I also don't think that mere transparency would really help solve any search engine "filter bubble" pro…

Agreed. I wouldn't either 80% of the time. But often I'm making a very directed search that I would really like the "best" results for where best is usually defined as different than the results I'm getting.

Hey, check this out, Google already sort of does it. I didn't know that (probably because I have "web history" turned off, so I don't get customizations.)

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2675292

Re: DuckDuckGo: Escape your search engine filter bubble

#155

Post by Matt_Cutts » Mon, Jun 20, 2011, 7:30 PM UTC

jannes wrote: post #148

Matt_Cutts wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"But here's why some people probably don't like personalization: It's invisible. There is nothing on the results page that tells you whether your results are personalized or not." Sorry, this is just not the case: we do provide indication on Google's search results page for personalized results. Here's a couple links that talk about how we surface whether results have been personalized: http://www.google.com/support/…

Thank you for the clarification. This comes as a surprise to me. I did not know that. In my defense, I couldn't know about the "View customizations" link because I do have web history turned off, so apparently I never saw any personalized search results. After reading the DuckDuckGo page I expected that everyone's search results get personalized, especially if I am logged in with a Gmail account. It's obviously not y…

Happy to discuss this, jannes. Your points are well-taken: when we first launched the ability to see why/how results were customized, we added a link at the top-right of the search results (the Search Engine Land article has a snapshot from those days).

But there's another guiding principle that things on the search results page need to "earn" their pixels. Since personalization is a second-order effect and very very few people ever cared enough to click the link and get more info, eventually that link made its way to the bottom of the search results.

Re: DuckDuckGo: Escape your search engine filter bubble

#156

Post by cbailey » Mon, Jun 20, 2011, 7:51 PM UTC

bad_user wrote: post #69

qjz wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, your argument is that it's bullshit because it's true?

I see it as being a straw man argument. The article makes the assumption that personalized search results are bad for you, then goes on exemplifying it, but does not say or demonstrate in any way why personalized search results are bad, especially since it doesn't give any context about the person making those queries. Search ranking is a matter of context. " Egypt " does not mean anything, other than the name of a c…

I agree. I think people will surround themselves with a filter bubble with or without personalized search results. Ever tried to convince an avid Fox or CNN reader to read the opposing view's site?

From my personal experience, people rarely search for something as simple as "Egypt," and instead, search for "Egypt travelling tips" like your example.

If your Google-fu is strong, you'll write a query that targets your desired results much better than a generic shot-in-the-dark query.

Re: DuckDuckGo: Escape your search engine filter bubble

#157

Post by Matt_Cutts » Mon, Jun 20, 2011, 7:52 PM UTC

sambe wrote: post #150

Matt_Cutts wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I want to see the best results, period - not the best results for me" But aren't you a part of the relevance equation? The ideal results for a search like [bitcoin crash] should be different for a Japanese-speaking searcher in Tokyo vs. a German-speaking searcher in Munich vs. a bitcoin expert vs. a programmer trying to diagnose why compiling bitcoin is crashing vs. my Mom who has never heard of bitcoin before, righ…

But why on earth do you persistently try to present German search results to an English speaker in Munich? This has been peeve #1 for years , across all Google services.

Good question; one person is annoyed by this endlessly a few offices down from me. It's hard to make sure that things are handled consistently sometimes, but if you use google.com/ncr or the "Google.com in English" link at the bottom of the home page, that should help. The "Language tools" link to the right of the search box should also let you set a cookie with your language preference.

Re: DuckDuckGo: Escape your search engine filter bubble

#158

Post by khafra » Mon, Jun 20, 2011, 8:09 PM UTC

mtogo wrote: post #136

Matt_Cutts wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Scroogle hits Google from a relatively small set of IP addresses. Be aware that Google is probably trying to localize for those IP addresses, so your results could be less relevant (in the same way that if you searched through a proxy in Germany, you'd be more likely to get results with a German emphasis). Personally, if I have a search that feels a bit sensitive, I just hop into incognito mode in Chrome. Con…

Your reccomendation is hilarious because it still does not give the user any privacy. Neither private browsing mode nor SSL will give the user any privacy from google, which is the real concern. You still log searches and IP addresses for an extremely long time. One solution that actually does solve this is to use Scroogle or to access google through Tor. EDIT: I feel that i should clarify that of course SSL is a ver…

> ...the real concern.

Ironically, "the real concern" is personalized. The married guy searching for "hot local hookups" doesn't care what google knows, he just doesn't want it to show up in his browser's history. The junior high student reading The Big Book of Mischief in the computer lab doesn't want his school's network monitors to find out. The dissident in Tunisia doesn't want his government monitoring his Internet usage.

There's only a small set of privacy-conscious Internet users who should be concerned about Google, whether or not they're as impregnable a bastion of privacy as their employees might claim.

Re: DuckDuckGo: Escape your search engine filter bubble

#159

Post by pilooch » Mon, Jun 20, 2011, 8:13 PM UTC

There's a personalization / privacy trade-off that needs to be considered. It is annoying that personalization cannot be achieved locally on the user machines or browser. Filtering / re-ranking results at home offers much privacy. My little personal project is to have the ML for personalization done at home, seeks the Seeks Project, http://www.seeks-project.info/ Personal control over the personal bubble matters...

Re: DuckDuckGo: Escape your search engine filter bubble

#160

Post by sorbus » Mon, Jun 20, 2011, 8:16 PM UTC

jerf wrote: post #151

sorbus wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it actually excessive, though? You're just assuming that it's a real problem without any evidence to support that it is.

Read my last paragraph carefully; I'm just pointing out the name doesn't matter, it's a real phenomena that doesn't go away by changing the name. My personal stance is actually a great deal more nuanced, which is that you can't not be in a bubble. It is mathematically impossible. Any way of slicing the torrent of information coming at you constitutes a bias. The entire idea of "piercing the bubble" is an instance of…

So filtering/personalization is always present; we entirely agree on that point. Is it excessive, though? If it's not excessive, then, almost by definition[1], it's not a problem - or at least is not a major one. There is actually a huge difference between "personalization" and "excessive personalization", which was what I was trying to get at.

(Also, paragraph != sentence)

[1] Excessive meaning "more than is necessary, normal, or desirable".