Bursting the Filter Bubble

Jah-Wren Ryel writes with news that a few CS folks are working on a way to present opposing viewpoints without angering the reader. From the article: "Computer scientists have discovered a way to number-crunch an individual's own preferences to recommend content from others with opposing views. The goal? To burst the 'filter bubble' that surrounds us with people we like and content that we agree with. A recent example of the filter bubble at work: Two people who googled the term 'BP.' One received links to investment news about BP while the other received links to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, presumably as a result of some recommendation algorithm." From the paper's abstract: "We found that recommending topically relevant content from authors with opposite views in a baseline interface had a negative emotional effect. We saw that our organic visualization design reverts that effect. We also observed significant individual differences linked to evaluation of recommendations. Our results suggest that organic visualization may revert the negative effects of providing potentially sensitive content."

Comments

its more than just political sensitivity

[Anonymous Coward]

i'm a generalist, i work in a few fields, including EE and CS - my colleague is pure CS

we're trying to have a conversation about a topic (distributed clocks) and based on our histories
we get entirely different search results, completely non-overlapping. his are general distributed
systems results and mine are narrowly turned to sensor networks

i had to ask him to make me a bibliography because I got sent into an entirely different
alleyway of the literature

thanks google

Re:its more than just political sensitivity

[sg_oneill]

Its even more problematic in areas like climate change where a large portion of the population appears unable to distinguish laymans commentary from actual research by climate scientists. If people spend a lot of time looking at conspiracy theory , creationist, or other similarly themed stuff on the net, google throws lots of denial sites at them, whereas people who have more analyical interests are more likely to get articles from science sites. The problem here is that folks with the conspiracy bent end up having no way to find information that might clear up their confusion if all they are getting is wattsup or alex jones or whatever. This just feeds the confirmation biases, and thats proving really harmful to science education right now.

Re:its more than just political sensitivity

[Burz]

Most people don't buy into climate conspiracy theory. IMHO, this new method is more likely to be employed by paid Public Relations types to blunt pressure calling for social and ecological responsibility. If they can target unhinged conspiracies as "bubbles", they can preferentially target informed progressives (or any online community) to serve the interests of big business.

I wouldn't trust the advertising business to be even-handed with acquired psychological tools.

Re:its more than just political sensitivity

[sribe]

The problem here is that folks with the conspiracy bent end up having no way to find information that might clear up their confusion if all they are getting is wattsup or alex jones or whatever.

Your point is well-reasoned. But, unfortunately, I think you are starting from a false premise because you simply do not understand how delusions work.

Re:its more than just political sensitivity

[Burz]

TFA could conceivably be titled, "How to turn up the Noise on reality-based social circles".

'Having trouble marketing in Facebook and Twitter audiences? Here's how to insinuate your ads into their conversations while keeping their protests down to a minimum...'

Re:its more than just political sensitivity

[Kell Bengal]

The problem here is one of correlation vs causation. Someone is not always right simply because they are the 'expert'; likewise, someone is not always wrong simply because they are a layperson. However, when it comes to knowing what you're talking about, there is a strong dependence on experience and familiarity with the subject matter. The vast majority of the time we might expect that an expert who devotes all of their efforts to studying a problem will have some advantage over those who engage with a topic briefly. That is why we value expertise in the first place. It does sometimes happen that experts get it wrong while laypeople get it right, but it's pretty unusual.

Re:its more than just political sensitivity

[ralphbecket]

Erm, if you're only exposed to "concensus" views and around the edges you get sympathetic nutcases like Lewandowsky claiming anyone who disagrees is a fantasist with a mental problem (oh, the sweet irony), aren't you in exactly the position you are concerned about?

Re:its more than just political sensitivity

[khallow]

The problem here is one of correlation vs causation.

So why do the experts say different things in private than in public? What's so special about climatology that even rather small technical problems can't be discussed publicly?

Re:its more than just political sensitivity

[Anonymous Coward]

When you really dig into the heart of this problem, IMHO it really comes down to the Scientists of the world being pretty dishonest in the first place. Although they're doing it with good intent, it's still wrong and it still causes a big part of the problem. The pattern goes like this: Scientists see a Big Problem for the World on the horizon in some of their data. They're not yet "standards of declaring new physics" sure of their conclusions, but the conclusions are so startling that they feel it's worth society expending effort to head off the possibility. Step two is when they say, "Well, most of the voting population isn't science-educated and/or doesn't understand probability and risk assessment, so they won't be able to rationally make the right call and join us in this effort, and we have to do something about that", and then they proceed to overstate their case and basically lie to everyone about the data and the probability of impact (not to mention the probability of the correctness of their assessments) in order to drum up support and dollars. Then when skeptics go on the attack, they find easy targets, because the case *was* overstated. Once you've started that cycle, there's no end to the debate over who's being dishonest about what.

Climate Change / AGW isn't the first time this has happened in Science, and it especially isn't the first time it's happened in earth/natural/climate -related sciences. Saving the whales (and every truly unimportant species of beetle), or the Global Cooling scare that preceded Global Warming are good examples. The public has been lead down the wrong path by the nose by natural scientists many times before, with big headlines in the pop science mags over the past several decades. They know what it looks like, and they're tired of it. AGW-response is as big a business as oil now. Think of all the dollars going into "renewables" and government offices and programs to oversee them and such. Most of those dollars are a complete waste unless they're pushing towards solutions like Space-based solar or Nuclear Fusion, because anything short of those requires we kill off most of the human population first to drop our energy requirements down to an acceptable level for the petty darling renewables of the green movements.

Back on point: this is obviously a list compiled by an AGW-denier, so take it with all the salt you want, but read the quotes and datelines. They *are* real, and they do make a point: http://www.examiner.com/article/arctic-ocean-warming-icebergs-growing-scarce-washington-post-reports

Re:its more than just political sensitivity

[the_B0fh]

Apparently you are confident that you are reading their private correspondence correctly.

Why do you think you are?

Re:its more than just political sensitivity

[the_B0fh]

Examples that haven't been debunked? Obviously your google search results might be a tad different from mine, so URLs would help.

Re:its more than just political sensitivity

[kiddygrinder]

this is the most annoying part of the AGW movement, moving to smarter sources of energy has a lot of benefits over just burning oil because "everything is probably fine". i foresee electric cars for example becoming the norm simply because there is a lot more room for improvement in the tech that will make them more efficient and powerful than fuel burners, and this is the easiest way to move forward for deniers and true believers alike.

Re:its more than just political sensitivity

[esldude]

Yeah, realized this problem a few months back. I and a friend while on the phone typed absolutely identical search terms in. We got entirely different results. Often even highly different numbers of results. Like I returned 81,000 search results once and he got over a 400,000 for the same term. What we also found was if we kept typing in the same search terms somewhere around a dozen or more times we then started getting the same results. Sort of odd behavior. I thought. This using google of course. Since then I keep a couple other search engines handy that are anonymous, one basically does a google search for you, but without your history attached. And sometimes when unable to find what I wish, this alternate search engines can be more relevant in what I get back on searches.

Re:its more than just political sensitivity

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

TFA could conceivably be titled, "How to turn up the Noise on reality-based social circles".

Only if this specific algorithm were implemented anywhere besides this academic test.

Re:its more than just political sensitivity

[cyborg_zx]

Just because someone is technically a "layman" in the field doesn't mean that they are less knowledgeable than climate scientists.

I'm pretty sure that's what it means unless there's some ordination process to enter the Church of Climatology I don't know about.

Recall the fallacy of appeal to authority.

*False* authourity. Any old random scientist wouldn't be good enough. Appealing to a relevant expert is not a fallacy.

Re:its more than just political sensitivity

[TubeSteak]

What's so special about climatology that even rather small technical problems can't be discussed publicly?

There's nothing special about climatology in that regards.
It's completely normal for people doing work to not want you to see their errors; only the successfully completed result.

The only thing special about climatology is the number of people (who are completely unable to form an educated opinion on the subject)
that grasp at any straw to support their preconceived ideas. This applies to both sides.

What doesn't apply to both sides is the concerted effort, by the same lobbyists and think tanks who shilled for Big Tobacco, to manufacture misinformation and bad science in order to cloud the debate.

Re:its more than just political sensitivity

[SnowZero]

It is exceedingly unlikely that the results don't overlap after the first few, but if you can produce a copy of the two sets of results, I will forward them to someone on the Google Search team for debugging.

People hugely overestimate the effect of personalization -- it is a ranking tweak not a complete change to the search engine. It does not make economic sense to have personalized whole-web indexes.

Btw, if you don't like personalization ever, it is pretty easy to turn off:
    https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/54048?hl=en
Just remove web history and uncheck private results.

Re:its more than just political sensitivity

[Ubi_NL]

Just because someone is technically a "layman" in the field doesn't mean that they are less knowledgeable than climate scientists.

No but it correlates very strongly

Re:its more than just political sensitivity

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

Wrong answer. The right answer is: use Google, and Bing, and DDG, and as many other search engines are you can. All have their biases, and with all their results combined, you're probably closer to getting a somewhat balanced view of reality than either choosing or shunning a single one of them.

Re:its more than just political sensitivity

[kermidge]

Yeah, that's why I suggest making it a button to click, to see what one might be missing from within one's own de facto silo (no matter how diligent one might be in seeking diverging views, it's also something we can easily not do well.) As for probs with source, good data, all that, we already have that problem. Gimme a button, lemme see what I might not, otherwise. In the end I'll choose what to read. Having more from which to choose seems a good thing, albeit requiring me to make more decisions - but that's already part of the normal day's load in skimming the news and tech sites.

Re:its more than just political sensitivity

[aaaaaaargh!]

Does Google adapt based on IP even if you never log into their "services"? I never log in and don't see any results tailored to me, but now I'm wondering whether that's actually true.

Regarding the paper: Don't bother reading it, it's superficial CS stuff with no proper background theory, they don't even model preferences right. :-(

Re:its more than just political sensitivity

[Gr8Apes]

Based on what's being responded to this post, it doesn't seem an isolated case. Granted, there's no proof, but given what we've all seen, it appears to be at least somewhat true.

The simple solution is simply using a "trash" browser instance that you can completely clear all cookies and local data from, you can avoid the personalization almost entirely, at least for a short while.

Re:its more than just political sensitivity

[dkleinsc]

Recall the fallacy of appeal to authority.

An appeal to authority is not fallacious if:
- The authority being cited is operating within their area of expertise.
- The authority is well-qualified to answer the question.

An appeal to authority is strongest if the authority's response to the question is the same as other authorities have to the same question e.g. a physicist explaining why the sky is blue (well-understood at this point) is a stronger argument than a physicist explaining why string theory is true (possibly right, but possibly wrong).

Re:its more than just political sensitivity

[khallow]

The only thing special about climatology is the stakes

FTFY. Whether superstring theory ends up being a key part of a valid theory of everything is mostly irrelevant to us. As a result, any biases, shenanigans, etc aren't particularly important.

The theory of anthropogenic climate change has deep relevance to modern society because we might have to completely restructure our energy system. There are huge winners and huge losers should that happen. Trillions of dollars are at stake either way.

The casual approach used in most of science just doesn't work in this situation.

Re:its more than just political sensitivity

[SleazyRidr]

The casual approach used in most of science just doesn't work in this situation.

Why do you think that science is "casual". Do you think the germ theory arose because Dr. Pasteur was casual about his germs? Do you think we have nuclear weapons because the Manhattan Project was casual about atoms? Do you think we have the myriad of drugs we have today because the drug companies are staffed by casual scientists? Science works because people are continually testing things: nothing is accepted as true. The scientist who could disprove the Anthropogenic Global Warming argument would win every award that exists and some people might make a new award for them. It hasn't happened because everything we see points to AGW. There are hundreds of laboratories around the world trying to disprove it, but no one has succeeded. There is a reason they haven't, I'll let you work out the reason on your own.

Re:its more than just political sensitivity

[khallow]

Why do you think that science is "casual".

Observation.

Do you think the germ theory arose because Dr. Pasteur was casual about his germs? Do you think we have nuclear weapons because the Manhattan Project was casual about atoms? Do you think we have the myriad of drugs we have today because the drug companies are staffed by casual scientists? Science works because people are continually testing things: nothing is accepted as true.

Do you think that the Manhattan Project would have worked out as successfully, if we had approached it like we would superstring theory? That is, come up with a ton of theories and play with large particle accelerators for a few decades? Do you think drugs would be as effective or safe, if we treated them as rigorously as traffic flow models or the gaming experiment of experimental economics?

One of the more notorious aspects of the "Climategate" thing, where someone released emails and code of scients at the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia, was the half-assed nature of the code part, particularly how data sets were normalized and merged in arbitrary seeming ways and with all sorts of weird, unexplained tricks applied.

The scientist who could disprove the Anthropogenic Global Warming argument would win every award that exists and some people might make a new award for them.

Why do you consider disagreement with AGW theory itself the only sort of possible disagreement? I agree that AGW is probably true to some degree. I don't agree that we should do something about that as a result. But my disagreement gets lumped in with everyone else.

My view is if you want to figure out economic problems like whether to do anything about AGW in the short term, then market driven and risk analysis approaches work better than computer models based on dubious temperature proxy data by people with both an ax to grind and status and financial incentive to throw things a certain way (towards exaggerating the impact of human effects on climate).

Critical thinking

[nickmalthus]

"I know you won't believe me, but the highest form of Human Excellence is to question oneself and others." - Socrates

It is good to see someone researching ways to combat group think with technology.

Re:Critical thinking

[TubeSteak]

Don't confuse group think and tribalism.
The main difference is that group think is a problem for leaders, while tribalism is what motivates all the followers.

You can't combat tribalism nearly so easily as group think,
since the group identification is more than just a matter of facts.
Otherwise, the Red Sox wouldn't have any fans.

Re:Critical thinking

[smpoole7]

> "I know you won't believe me, but the highest form of Human Excellence is to question oneself and others." - Socrates

> It is good to see someone researching ways to combat group think with technology.

But that always, always starts with the guy in the mirror. First, get your own mind right (as Socrates says).

Next, most people listen to those friends whom they respect. You can challenge them to examine alternative points of view. The only thing I would ask (of everyone) is that you respect people who look at things as honestly as they know how, but reach a different conclusion from you. That's part of the human condition. The name-calling and "group think," as you call it, stops when we decide that it will stop.

I lean conservative/libertarian in philosophy, but I avoid polemics from all sides. My morning ritual nowadays consists of first checking the weather (because of my job), then heading to Real Clear Politics (www.realclearpolitics.com) to get a diversity of opinion, from Ezra Klein and Robert Kuttner to George Will and Mark Steyn. I also love a good (read: FRIENDLY) debate. If I see name-calling on either side, I lose interest in a hurry.

But have a friendly discussion with your friends. The old saying goes, "don't discuss politics or religion," but I say the opposite. If you show them respect, they'll learn to respect you, and in turn, they'll learn to respect opposing points of view. You might even learn a few things.

I certainly have. :)

Wanglish

[oldhack]

We found that recommending topically relevant content from authors with opposite views in a baseline interface had a negative emotional effect. We saw that our organic visualization design reverts that effect. We also observed significant individual differences linked to evaluation of recommendations. Our results suggest that organic visualization may revert the negative effects of providing potentially sensitive content.

Reads like somebody trying to write in English, and utterly failing.

Interesting and useful for Slashdot

[mattr]

I only skimmed the paper briefly but it is interesting in that:
- User clicks a wordcloud keyword/hashtag that draws lines from it to multiple florets (individual nacelle-like microflowers in a sunflower head), each of which represents a tweet in recent portion of a feed.
- Repudiates the idea of filtering to meet viewer expectations so everyone can see the same content.
- A cuteness factor (or what they say is "organic" being like a flower) apparently reduces gut reaction to tweets you do not agree with
- Viewer is able to actively pick tweets to read. Presumably as the sunflower head image is mathematically generated and each floret's color could be tweaked to match a positive/negative sentiment score, allowing the user to pick only items that agree/disagree with them but to do so consciously.

This last point would seem to be ideal and I'd like to see slashdot include something more than the slider ("read only above this score"), particularly for a topic that has over say 500 or 800 replies. How about a data visualization that shows all the posts/threads for an article and lets the user select based on where in this chart a post is? At the very list, something 2-dimensional not 1-dimensional.

How about...

[ackthpt]

We quit this crap of trying to target things to audiences and get back to the good old days of yore when we went out and found things to fascinate, inform and enrich ourselves rather than suffering pigeon-holing. Honestly, I think farcebook, amazon and others have it completely wrong. I'm bored by the same ol - same ol. I'm an explorer and love to wander and see new things. Keep showing me what i've already seen or already bought and I'm losing attention.

Re:How about...

[JanneM]

What "good old days" where those? When you read the newspaper that conformed to your political viewpoint; the weekly magazine that covered any world events only as far as it affected you and others like you; watched only the TV shows that reinforced what you thought you already knew and believed?

Re:How about...

[ackthpt]

What "good old days" where those? When you read the newspaper that conformed to your political viewpoint; the weekly magazine that covered any world events only as far as it affected you and others like you; watched only the TV shows that reinforced what you thought you already knew and believed?

No.

The internet before all this tracking of metrics and trying to anticipate what I'd like to see more of. I don't know what I want to see next, but I generally don't revisit the same old thing. After I bought a new camera is not the time to keep showing me camera stuff. When I looked up something on ebay to see what I might get for it, they keep trying to interest me in it over a year later - I don't buy everything I look at and there's no "I'm just trying to get an estimate of what I might get from a suck^H^H^H^Hbuyer so piss off and don't try to waggle it under my eyes for the next twelve bloody months" tick-box.

Just anecdotal, but the things facebook seems to track and then keep showing me have about 95% odds of not being of interest at all, the remaining 5% I wouldn't click on a link on there anyway or it's only tangentially relevant to something I was posting about.

After a while I just tune stuff out.

horsedrinkwater

[globaljustin]

I'm with you in wanting to combat "groupthink" but I don't think the technology in TFA will do it

First, who 'scores' the viewpoints? how is one organization weighted against another? ex: Fox News should be in the tabloid/nonsense news category but because Fox is kind of 'grandfathered' in as the 4th national network they are considered 'mainstream'

does this mean a person who goes to motherjones.com alot would get Fox News in this system? who determines that?

i would consider Fox News a 'lower' viewpoint...different sure, but not in any value added way....ignorance isn't an "opposing viewpoint"

2nd, is this going to be an "add-on"? Is the goal to get Google, etc to use it by default?

because people would ignore this tech for the same reason they don't bother seeking out differing viewpoints!!!

unless you force it on them the people who need it won't do it!!!

3rd, if forced upon them, people will inevitably train themselves to ignore the 'suggested alternate viewpoint' box just like they train themselves to ignore Google.com's "sponsored results" or tune out a commercial

To me, this is an example of why academics fail in public policy. They look at a problem and see human opposition as something uncategorizable so instead of understanding that **the problem isn't that people don't get opposing viewpoints...the problem is they willfully choose not to listen**

as they say, "You can lead a horse to water but you can't force them to drink"

this is like holding the horse's face in a water fountain

Push vs Pull

[quantaman]

If you search for X, and get confronted with an adversarial opinion, the contrary information is being pushed at you which is threatening and probably responsible for the negative emotional reaction.

If you search for X, see where the adversarial opinions are, but don't actually have to see them when you want to, that's more a pull mechanism and you feel much less threatened as a result.

From what I can tell glancing at the paper their system is very much a pull mechanism which probably lowers the negative response.

CNN starting decline, Fox News there already

[globaljustin]

but I wouldn't call it any "lower" of a viewpoint in the sense that they don't do anything that the other news agencies don't do themselves

it is lower...it started that way and sunk ever since

Fox News is about population control, not informing decision makers in an entertaining way as the 4th Estate in a Social Democracy

you're giving them way too much credit

Now, if you said that CNN is getting so bad it has **devolved** into being almost as ignorant as Fox News I would agree...

but there's a key difference! Both Fox and CNN are below standard...the standard hasn't shifted...quality news will always have essential characteristics (which Fox & increasingly CNN dont exhibit)...no...Fox and CNN have gotten worse!!!!

sometimes true, but I for one enjoy REASONED oppos

[raymorris]

I'm sure that sometimes people choose not to read opposing viewpoints. On the other hand, I very much enjoy the opposing viewpoint when it's presented in the style I prefer - with logic, fact based, and backed up with details like relevant numbers. Very often, it's not so much the opposing conclusion that turns me off, but the illogical, purely emotional and often sarcastic presentation.

In the post I'm replying to, for example, I enjoyed the second part, discussing possible reasons, but wouldn't have clicked to read the first part, the pointless Fox News rant. For the same reason, I don't listen to Rush Limbaugh - his name-calling silliness doesn't interest me.

Since you mentioned Fox News, I'll use them as an example. The one show I used to enjoy on Fox was Hannity and Coombes (sp?) precisely because they presented both sides and both were generally calm and logical. Both Hannity, the conservative, and Coombes, the liberal, would at times say things like "good point", or "I hadn't thought of it that way". Some people do enjoy hearing an opposing view; most don't like being made fun of and called "idiots", which is what happens all to often in political discourse. Occasionally I listen to Alan's radio show and I enjoy it, though I rarely agree with him. The one thing that bugs me is that he often yells over people and cuts them off when he sees that they have proven him wrong. He didn't do that on TV, not that I noticed.

Wait what?

[Charliemopps]

Two people who googled the term 'BP.' One received links to investment news about BP while the other received links to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, presumably as a result of some recommendation algorithm.

So I tried this, I wanted to see if the Internet thought I was a democrat or a republican but it just came up with a bunch of links to "Big Penises" I was outraged, and after 15 to 30 min or so of confirming the content I switched search engines. The algorithms are clearly out of control!

Re: "Organic visualization"

[Animats]

The "organic visualization" thing and its jargon are described in this thesis done at the MIT Media Lab. This is what happens when postmodernists try to improve on Tufte. Some of it is pretentious bullshit. But there may be the genesis of some new phone apps in there.

Here's a good, but unrelated, example of "organic visualization": BitListen This is a little HTML5/JavaScript page which depicts transactions on the Bitcoin block chain. An older example is Muckety. This can be done well, but most attempts in this direction are duds.

Does not address the real problem

[YoungManKlaus]

Using a tool means that you are already aware of the problem. Lets suffice to say: most people are not, and also may even feel content in their bubble. And that's the real problem.

How existent is this "bubble"?

[supercrisp]

I keep reading about this bubble, but I don't experience in my daily life. I am by political inclination pretty far to the left, but I run into plenty of right-wing opinions, from the libertarians on Slashdot to the Tea Party people on Facebook. I interact with moderate Republicans at work and extreme (God needs to cleanse this nation! Gold Standard!) Republicans in my neighborhood. I have no sense that there's a bubble. I sometimes wish there was a bubble that could filter out all the idiots. Some of the best days of my life were spent hanging out with people of varied and conflicting views who were all intelligent and capable of mutual respect and civility. I'd love a bubble like that. But, again, I don't see any damn bubble in my daily life. Why's it getting broadcast so much? Cui bono?

Re: Viewpoints?

[LifesABeach]

The prudent investor would read both. The concerned environmentalist would read both. Filtering so that we don't offend? The offended should learn to read.