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Preference Engines Side-Effects in Online Retail
jasonla writes "The Los Angeles Times ran a Column One article about the impact preference engines have on consumer buying habits. From the article: 'In the physical world, I bump into all kinds of people by chance. But online, if recommenders were perfect, I can have the option of talking to only people who are just like me. There's a danger that if we don't have some level of shared interaction, it can be destructive to our social cohesion.'"
This is a very valid point. As people start to only interact with similar minds online, they will confront a sort of system shock when they have to deal with people who have a radically different view on life in real life. It would probably take a few generations for this effect to happen though...
In a way, Slashdot is a pioneer in this area. Posts which are unacceptable to the mainstream are moderated down, effectively "disappearing" them to most viewers.
What the preference engine does is to tailor this to the individual viewer. Thus groupthink can operate at very refined levels. Provided that there is sufficient clustering of opinions, isolated communities-of-opinion form.
Indeed, even if the clustering of opinion is slight, over the long term it may be reinforced by the effects of the preference engine, thus causing a sort of condensation of parochialism.
Of course, the same thing can happen in meatspace. But there it takes longer, and there always the uncomfortable chance that you may happen by chance to talk to someone outside your community (a homeless person, a Bush voter, an atheist, etc.), and your assumptions could be challenged.
Whereas online, it seems that these isolated communities are ever more cohesive, and venture into foreign territory only to engage in virtual pogroms. (E.g., in the context of political weblogs, the occasional 'invasions' of redstate.org by partisans from dailykos.com)
Society was able to survive in this mode for quite a long time. It's only been recently that the idea of exposing yourself to differing opinions and seeing other people's side of things has gained wide-acceptance.
;)
Nah, it's still the same as it always was. The availability for differing opinions does exist but people tend to stick to their belief system. People feel comfortable congregating (online or in person) with others that share similar beliefs (duh).
You think that because there is "proof" Intelligent Design is a bunch of "lies" that those that are conservative religious believers won't stick to their flock?
People don't want to believe something so they center their research to "disprove" the "disprovers".
I'd like to say that I am positively influenced by different people that believe in different things but I know I'd just be full of shit -- just as full of shit as I believe everyone else to be
YMMV.
What's social interaction?
Television and TV commercials have already done this. Now ISPs are the middlemen now, but nothing else has changed. Certainly in suburban America, everyone seems increasingly isolated. I assume that's true elsewhere, but I don't know, 'cause I don't go anywhere anymore. (Note to mods: I'm dead serious)
Actually, if you really want to drive Amazon's preference engine mad, just let several people with wildly different tastes use the same account. Or buy some Christmas gifts for friends while you're also buying books for yourself. You get some strange recommendations from then on.
... this is a great tool to look for products that are really popular (which translates usually into a wide user support base) or that suck terribly and have better alternatives.
:)
This really can't be blamed on the preference engine though, since it's just a form of the old Garbage In, Garbage Out principle. The preference engine is mostly filled with data from single-consumer accounts. If you then go and create an account and let four people use it, the recommendations won't work very well, because it's not a case that the engine is designed to deal with very elegantly. So you get all sorts of strange predictions, or ones which can only possibly appeal to one person's tastes. (In other words, you don't get any help in finding a book or movie that the whole family would like -- instead you get recommendations that are obviously person-specific.)
More generally, my point is that I'm not really concerned about these preference engine type devices because they're not as generalizable. They only make predictions based on the data that's being put into them by other people, therefore they're only as 'good' as people's situations are similar. So if people get similar predictions and as a result buy the same things from Amazon, it's really only a reflection of underlying similarities in tastes. They are a symptom of groupthink, not a cause.
Personally, I like Amazon's system. I've never bought anything based on a recommendation, so I don't know how successful a business tool it is, but I get a kick out of navigating through their site sometimes and following the links, seeing what comes up. What I have found useful though are the links which show actual purchase data, for example while looking at a WiFi router it says "35% of people who looked at this item eventually went on to buy *this one*"
Given that it's 3:11am, I hope this isn't completely incoherent.
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