The world wide web – a place where you can be in a filter bubble
The term ‘filter bubble’ only entered my lexicon last week when my daughter was doing a university assignment on the topic. It is, I learnt, the phenomena where we are served up web content based on what web sites we’ve visited in the past, what searches we’ve made and what comments we’ve made on blogs such as Facebook. Of course I knew that this happened, but I didn’t realise it was called a filter bubble.
Let’s look at this a little more closely. Do you recall times that ads have popped up that related to previous searches you’ve made on the web? Or, if you’re a Facebook user, why certain news items or ads are served up to you? This is your filter bubble at work.
This is created by carefully crafted programming that harvests your ‘preferences’ (the things that interest you) and then seeks to serve up similar content in order to entice you to a particular website, make certain choices or buy certain products and services. Advertises want you in a filter bubble so they can reach you. In fact any business with internet savvy want you in a filter bubble so they can be more targeted in their messaging to you. For example, if you visit a travel website and browse around it, there is likely to be programming working in the background, recording what you’ve done in that session. The idea is that the website can then show ads for products or services that relate to what you were looking at.
A key device used to store your preferences is a small file called a cookie. It is downloaded to your web browser when you go to a particular website. On sites where you log in, such as Facebook, your viewing preferences are compiled each time you use the application.
So what if want to get out of your filter bubble?
There’s not much you can do about operating in a filter bubble on social networking sites you log into, such as Facebook. It’s simply the way these applications work. When you sign up to use them, you have to agree to their terms of service, which includes this type of tracking. Most people don’t read through these terms, but if you’re particularly concerned about what is being tracked when you use the service, you’d be well advised to read it and either opt in or opt out.
In many countries, including Australia, privacy regulations mandate that websites using cookies and other means of tracking your preferences have a privacy policy displayed. Here’s the web privacy policy of the Australian Government. It gives you a pretty good idea of what you can expect.
But if you want a bit more anonymity and lack of bias when you surf the net, then a good start is to disable cookies on your browser. Here’s how you do it:
How to disable cookies
I will show you the steps in Chrome, currently the most popular browser on the web (with links to instructions for Safari, Internet Explorer and Firefox underneath):
On a Mac, go to Chrome > Preferences
On a PC, click the ‘hamburger’ menu (top right hand corner) > Settings
- Click Show advanced settings.
- In the “Privacy” section, click the Content settings button
- In the “Cookies” section, click the two ‘Block sites’ buttons
- Click Done
- Visit Chrome’s page on changing privacy settings for more details.
For other browsers, visit the following pages:
It’s easy to get spooked about privacy. I haven’t disabled cookies on my browser. In fact the functioning of websites can be affected if you do. I suppose I’m not worried about operating in a filter bubble as such, but if I want to get unbiased search results, it’s good to know how I can get out of it if I want to.
Read more about the filter bubble on Wikipedia.