Google Personalizes Search Results Even When You're Logged Out, a DuckDuckGo Study Finds (theverge.com)

According to a new study conducted by Google competitor DuckDuckGo, it does not seem possible to avoid personalization when using Google search, even by logging out of your Google account and using the private browsing "incognito" mode. From a report: DuckDuckGo conducted the study in June of this year, at the height of the US midterm election season. It did so with the ostensible goal of confirming whether Google's search results exacerbate ideological bubbles by feeding you only information you've signaled you want to consume via past behavior and the data collected about you. It's not clear whether that question can be reliably answered with these findings, and it's also obvious DuckDuckGo is a biased source with something to gain by pointing out how flawed Google's approach may be. But the study's findings are nonetheless interesting because they highlight just how much variance there are in Google search results, even when controlling for factors like location.

Comments

Re:Not surprising

[E-Rock]

Can't speak to what that one does, but ad networks pull cookies and do other fingerprinting. So Facebook wasn't open, but an ad network cookie was there, so it could get your ID and feed it into the network. Boom, ad can now connect to you all over the place.

It's super creepy.

Re:Not surprising

[Waffle Iron]

It happens on this site, too.

I look at one story, and most of the posts are trolls about APK, immanent Trump incarceration, and giant swastikas.

Then I open an article on a completely different topic, and what do I see? The very same posts about APK, immanent Trump incarceration, and giant swastikas.

It's downright creepy.

They even do this down to the micro-level, randomly inserting "â(TM)" into people's posts on my browser, no matter what the topic. I assume that they're targeted promotions for this trademarked "â" product. I don't know where they got the idea that I was interested in â.

Too much of a good thing is bad.

[hey!]

Online news sucks specifically because it is excessively tailored for you.

One of the lost pleasures of 50 years ago is reading the paper; modern papers are ghosts of their former selves. A newspaper was a carefully curated collection of informative articles designed to appeal to a broad variety of people in a geographic area. Yes, they had ideological focuses, but narrow that focus too far and circulation would drop. Because newspapers desired the largest possible audience within a restricted geographic area, items in them had to stand up to critical scrutiny from a number of points of view.

Since there were no smartphones, when you had a little down time you'd read a bit further into the paper until you were scraping the bottom of the barrel. I'd start with the front page, go to the science section and work my way down until I was reading the sports page. And when you finished reading you'd be just a tiny bit different than when you started, because you'd been exposed to unfamiliar issues and viewpoints.

That feeling of having your mind expanded is what I miss. You can spend a few hours reading online news but when you're done you won't be any different than when you started. While you're reading you may be entertained, provoked, and pandered to, but in the end the algorithm isn't there to inform you. It's there to pigeonhole you so you can be bundled for sale.