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DuckDuckGo: Escape your search engine filter bubble

dontbubble.us

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Re: DuckDuckGo: Escape your search engine filter bubble

#161

Post by khafra »

romaniv wrote: post #107
mquander wrote: post #86

The purpose of search engines is filtering content to give you what you want, which might be information, or it might be discussion, or polemics, or gossip. If you want to learn about some topic that has some element of subjectivity, familiarize yourself with the different points of view and read the writing of whoever you are interested in. There are lots of tools on the Internet to facilitate this -- Wikipedia, for…

The purpose of search engines is filtering content to give you what you want The purpose of search engines is filtering content to give us what we asked for . Unless they developed mind-reading technology, Google doesn't really know what I want and attempts at guessing it will lead to substandard results. *-- Wikipedia, for example, is built around an ideal of giving people an objective survey of different things. A…

The purpose of search engines is filtering content to give you what you want. I think this is fairly noncontroversial.

What is controversial is whether "what I asked for" is a better approximation of that, or whether "what Google's model of me indicates I really want" is a better approximation.

I can't say which one wins for you, right now; but it's clear that this hinges on the accuracy of the model--which is one reason privacy and usability are at odds.

Re: DuckDuckGo: Escape your search engine filter bubble

#162

Post by khafra »

adamdecaf wrote: post #97
alexandros wrote: post #85

What about the filter bubble of me only searching for what i am interested in? Will DDG throw in some random results in every search to save me from myself?

DDG won't build a profile about you; it only returns the most relevant links to the keywords entered. The original Google search, only on today's web.

That's not what he asked. He asked (facetiously) about the higher-order search bubble: ie, if I only ever search for articles about Erlang innards, I'm never going to read about The Kardashians, which is relevant to a sizeable portion of contemporary American culture. To truly pop my bubble, DDG ought to throw in completely random results every now and then.

Re: DuckDuckGo: Escape your search engine filter bubble

#163

Post by roc »

Matt_Cutts wrote: post #157
sambe wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And yet for some reason, the search link from Google Toolbar seemed to ignore that cookie and certainly ignored my account preferences, sending me to the localized search page regardless.

Short version of long story: I used to bounce my net traffic through an ssh tunnel to a hosted VM. The VM was moved to a new machine in south-east asia. Having Google Toolbar constantly send my searches to the localized engine, despite the cookie selection, my being logged in and my preferences being clearly set, was more of a day-to-day annoyance than having my traffic piped across the Pacific twice.

Re: DuckDuckGo: Escape your search engine filter bubble

#164

Post by newman314 »

Matt_Cutts wrote: post #103

If I had to tackle the notion of over-personalization in ~5 minutes, I'd say: - If someone prefers to search Google without personalization, add "&pws=0" (the "pws" stands for "personalized web search") to the end of the Google search url to turn it off, or use the incognito version of Chrome. Personalization tends to be a nice relevance improvement overall, but it doesn't trigger that much--when it launched, the imp…

Here is a slightly different question, how do you get "no country redirect" to stick reliably?

I cant begin to describe how annoying it is that I am presented with a different language when travelling to a different country. All I ever want is Google in English but it keeps going back to a localized search regardless of the many times that I choose "google in english"

Re: DuckDuckGo: Escape your search engine filter bubble

#165

Post by newman314 »

assemble wrote: post #147
nextparadigms wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want to jump so many hoops just to do one damn search. Personally, I hate the country specific personalization, and perhaps it's useful to most people in my country rather than showing more US results, but I'm really not interested in those types of results myself. I wish I could just check a box in my Preferences and then be able to see the universal search results. I know I can use /ncr at the end, but I'd…

Just add a new search engine with the special url and make it the default as opposed to the pre-baked search engines.

You cant easily do this on a mobile device.

Re: DuckDuckGo: Escape your search engine filter bubble

#166

Post by jerf »

sorbus wrote: post #160
jerf wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 necessa…

A paragraph may legally consist of one sentence. It may legally consist of one word in some cases.

You seem to be trying to draw me into defending a point I'm not making. I'm making a much more subtle one, which is that you can't escape being in a bubble (not the bubble, which I initially typed, because there isn't the bubble, there's all kinds of them), so in a way arguing about whether it's "excessive" isn't even the right dimension to argue on; the filter bubbles simply are. (Not "simply ar excessive", simply are; they simply exists regardless of whether they are excessive or desirable or anything else.) The question is, what should be done about that fact, rather than how do we prevent that fact from being true, and to be honest I'm rather ambivalent about the answer to that question, because the answer is dominated more by your preconceptions and pre-existing goals than anything interesting.

I really should just blog this up.

Re: DuckDuckGo: Escape your search engine filter bubble

#167

Post by malaka »

"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, right?"

Maybe, but that is not the point.

Besides, you are mixing localization (japanese vs german) with personalization (expert vs naive), and what is worst is that you are assuming that Google knows so well each user so as to be right (and that is either impossible, either extremely creepy), at every single instant of his life (a person can change interests).

Furthermore, to grab your example, how can Google know that an expert in bitcoin and expert in bitcoin compilation and crash solver, is not just interested in hearing about the "market" crash of bitcoin?

Google CANNOT read the users' mind. And even if it did, there would not be a need for "personalized search", as the "mind reading" would give enough search criteria to nail the results more easily (albeit, most people do not know exactly what they want, so it will still be an iterative process, which is good, as randomness is the seed for evolution).

So, back to the point, it is that in the quest for "adequate results" for each person, Google is turning web search into a non-deterministic event ().

Imagine the web being a library, and the search being searching for the library's book database, why would the search for a given book return different results to different persons? It should always return the same results, if the person doing the search is not satisfied with the results, then she/he will add more criteria. In other words, let the person do the filtering!

Once that Google accepts that in his quest for "better results" (where 'better' is a concept decided by solely Google and whose ranking parameters and algorithm are unknown) there is a potential (probably demonstrable already) for a "filter bubble" with positive feedback loop on user behaviour, which, as with any positive feedback loop, can go out of control, exacerbating certain ideologies and fueling extremisms.

And there is a fundamental difference between a "self guided" (as in self controlled) filtering, where users would knowingly filter out results in order to find those that they like, and a "google guided" (as in externally controlled), filtering.

() strictly speaking, search will not be deterministic as the web is a dynamic system and it grows, so search results can vary with time, but they should not vary from person to person at a given time.

Re: DuckDuckGo: Escape your search engine filter bubble

#168

Post by malaka »

Matt_Cutts wrote: post #145
nextparadigms wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want to jump so many hoops just to do one damn search. Personally, I hate the country specific personalization, and perhaps it's useful to most people in my country rather than showing more US results, but I'm really not interested in those types of results myself. I wish I could just check a box in my Preferences and then be able to see the universal search results. I know I can use /ncr at the end, but I'd…

"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 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, right?"

Maybe, but that is not the point.

Besides, you are mixing localization (japanese vs german) with personalization (expert vs naive), and what is worst is that you are assuming that Google knows so well each user so as to be right (and that is either impossible, either extremely creepy), at every single instant of his life (a person can change interests).

Furthermore, to grab your example, how can Google know that an expert in bitcoin and expert in bitcoin compilation and crash solver, is not just interested in hearing about the "market" crash of bitcoin?

Google CANNOT read the users' mind. And even if it did, there would not be a need for "personalized search", as the "mind reading" would give enough search criteria to nail the results more easily (albeit, most people do not know exactly what they want, so it will still be an iterative process, which is good, as randomness is the seed for evolution).

So, back to the point, it is that in the quest for "adequate results" for each person, Google is turning web search into a non-deterministic event ( * ).

Imagine the web being a library, and the search being searching for the library's book database, why would the search for a given book return different results to different persons? It should always return the same results, if the person doing the search is not satisfied with the results, then she/he will add more criteria. In other words, let the person do the filtering!

Once that Google accepts that in his quest for "better results" (where 'better' is a concept decided by solely Google and whose ranking parameters and algorithm are unknown) there is a potential (probably demonstrable already) for a "filter bubble" with positive feedback loop on user behaviour, which, as with any positive feedback loop, can go out of control, exacerbating certain ideologies and fueling extremisms.

And there is a fundamental difference between a "self guided" (as in self controlled) filtering, where users would knowingly filter out results in order to find those that they like, and a "google guided" (as in externally controlled), filtering.

( * ) strictly speaking, search will not be deterministic as the web is a dynamic system and it grows, so search results can vary with time, but they should not vary from person to person at a given time.

Re: DuckDuckGo: Escape your search engine filter bubble

#169

Post by avar »

newman314 wrote: post #164
Matt_Cutts wrote: post #103

If I had to tackle the notion of over-personalization in ~5 minutes, I'd say: - If someone prefers to search Google without personalization, add "&pws=0" (the "pws" stands for "personalized web search") to the end of the Google search url to turn it off, or use the incognito version of Chrome. Personalization tends to be a nice relevance improvement overall, but it doesn't trigger that much--when it launched, the imp…

Here is a slightly different question, how do you get "no country redirect" to stick reliably? I cant begin to describe how annoying it is that I am presented with a different language when travelling to a different country. All I ever want is Google in English but it keeps going back to a localized search regardless of the many times that I choose "google in english"

I suppose you know about http://www.google.com/ncr ? It works some of the time.

Some of the time it doesn't, e.g. now when Google has custom logos I'll get a search term in Dutch (I'm in The Netherlands) when I click on it, even though I'm using google.com in English when doing so.

Re: DuckDuckGo: Escape your search engine filter bubble

#170

Post by ThomPete »

yanw wrote: post #39
ThomPete wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry but this is a real issue, whether DDG solves it or not. At least to me.

It's not an issue just because you want to believe it is. Media outlets always filtered stuff for you but now the algorithms are 'filtering' results according to your interaction to find what's relevant to you, so you have a 'vote' here. You also can dig through any initial results (click the news vertical to find more news for example) you couldn't do that with the media of yore.

It's not not an issue just because it doesn't apply to you.

If you want to understand where I am coming from then this is why I think it's an issue

http://000fff.org/slaves-of-the-feed-this-is-not-the-realtim...

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