Cory Doctorow:

Pariser is concerned that invisible "smart" customization of your Internet experience can make you parochial, exploiting your cognitive blind-spots to make you overestimate the importance or prevalence of certain ideas, products and philosophies and underestimate others.

Decius:

This is an important discussion.

Aren't "filters" inherent and inevitable? The filters on the Internet might be different from those on earlier technologies, but we've always had filters and always will. Aren't "smart filters" the founding principle of MemeStreams?

If the filters are more "personal" today, overall there is much more information, and more diversity, than in an era when the entire population shared just a handful of major sources, namely the four broadcast television channels.

In some ways "The Filter Bubble" seems like a media technology-focused variation on the theme of Bowling Alone. Is there really anything here that McLuhan wasn't saying 40-50 years ago? Consider:

Each new form of media, according to the analysis of McLuhan, shapes messages differently thereby requiring new filters to be engaged in the experience of viewing and listening to those messages.

And then:

In social media circles, there has been much discussion about a (dare I say it) paradigm shift in the way messages are processed in today's digital culture. The focus of this discussion is in the nature of publishing and filtering; specifically, the shift from filter --> publish (mass media) to publish --> filter (social media). I'm still chewing on this, but I think our old friend Marshall McLuhan can help here...

The self-reinforcement effect of "filters" has forever been a characteristic feature of American society, and there is no particular dependence on high technology; see Tocqueville:

The Americans make associations to give entertainments, to found seminaries, to build inns, to construct churches, to diffuse books, to send missionaries to the antipodes; in this manner they found hospitals, prisons, and schools. If it is proposed to inculcate some truth or to foster some feeling by the encouragement of a great example, they form a society. Wherever at the head of some new undertaking you see the government in France, or a man of rank in England, in the United States you will be sure to find an association.

I met with several kinds of associations in America of which I confess I had no previous notion; and I have often admired the extreme sk... [ Read More (0.6k in body) ]

Everything you're saying here is true. Nevertheless, I think the key point being made here is solid: Filters make editorial decisions, therefore:

1. Filter designers should consider the impact of their editorial decisions on the world view of their readers. Its possible to provide an information view that is too monochrome, and in some contexts (like news) that could have negative consequences.

2. More filter transparency is desirable. I can google myself, but I have no way to know if I'm seeing the same things that you're seeing when you Google me. The question of "why I'm seeing this result and not that result" has been asked a lot and so far no one really wants to answer it. Also, the personalization of results makes it hard to communicate. You can't tell someone "its the first Google result for XYZ search" because XYZ search is never the same for everyone.

I'd like to be able to view searches through a collection of preset filters or lenses. For example, being able to switch back and forth between a personalized and generic result list might be interesting.

Decius:

Filters make editorial decisions, therefore:

More filter transparency is desirable.

I'd like to be able to view searches through a collection of preset filters or lenses. For example, being able to switch back and forth between a personalized and generic result list might be interesting.

Consider the following new Twitter feature:

Twitter has begun rolling out a new feature that lets users view the world through another perspective, specifically through the perspective of other specific people on Twitter. The new feature will appear on the /following page of any profile on the site and will display the most recent messages from the Twitter users that a profile owner is following. The page currently just shows who they are following.

In other words: if you look at my profile on Twitter you can see not only who I am following but you can also see Twitter as I see Twitter. This might seem like a small change, but philosophically it's a big one.