Eli pariser – Data Science, Data Analytics and Machine Learning Consulting in Koblenz Germany

Propaganda, filtering and blocking by Facebook?

Rene — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 17:33:22 +0000

The discussions about the ethics of facebook are old and everyone knows my oppinion on their ethics. But now I discovered a youtube video shared by a Google Product Manager on Google plus that Facebook will filter out your invitations to Googleplus from your friends facebook news stream.
It is not new that facebook is filtering news in your friends news stream but now they seem to filter information and content they don’t like and they don’t want to reach you!
In my oppinion this is very close to propaganda and our freedom! Of course there is a competition on social networking and facebook is affraid of google. But this kind of bloking and filtering of content is in my oppinion unacceptable!
have a look at the video for yourself!

This is not about competition anymore this is about ethics! Ask yourself: “Do you really want to use a social network and give so much power to a company that blocks your friends from telling you something?”

Filterbubble appeared on Eli Parisers Moveon.org!

Rene — Tue, 24 May 2011 17:53:21 +0000

Yesterday I clicked on Eli Parisers site moveon.org and right away I was surprised that the AddThis plugin under the headline story offered facebook, email, twitter AND meinVZ (one of germanys biggest social networking sites)

MeinVZ logo can be found in the German Version of Moveon.org

I asked a friend in the states to visit moveon.org. For him the plugin offered facebook / email / twitter and google and of course no MeinVZ for the Americans.

Instead of MeinVZ there is a link to Google on the american Moveon website

Well of course this isn’t really the kind of personalization that Eli Pariser is telling us to watch out for. In my opinion it is a rather useful personalization of technology and not a personalization of information. But I was sure that it wasn’t on Elis mind that this is actually happening. Since Eli always points out that the filterbubble is invisible I thought it is an excelent little example of how INVISIBLE the filter bubble actually is and how easy people can contribute to it. So I contacted him and told him about it.

Eli Parisers reply to my mail

It’s a good catch — I wasn’t aware that AddThis was doing that. In the long run, we’re hoping to move away from that plugin for a number of reasons, but it’s fine to point out if you’d like — it does underscore the point that one can miss this happening under one’s own nose.

Google uses your Location to personalize search results

Rene — Mon, 23 May 2011 11:47:23 +0000

So today I’ll start my research about the 57 signals Google uses to personalize search results. To verify that Google uses your Location to tailor search results was an easy score. After the experiment we can be 100% certain that your location is one of the 57 signals. Well I guess there was no surprise to this. Anyway personalizing search to your location is in my opinion a lot of help especially because it seems that google gives the user the freedom to pass by this filter and the filter also doesnt seem to be that strong:

First Experiment: verify Location as a signal

I am right now sitting in the city of Koblenz and I was typing in a search for weather (Wetter in German) Google returns me the weatherforcast for Koblenz. Afterwards I used a proxy tunnel to my webserver of www.rene-pickhardt.de which is located in the city of Stuttgart. After doing the exact same search on the same computer with the same browser Google returned the weather forcast of Stuttgart.

google search for weather. My location was Koblenz

Google search for weather when using a proxy tunnel to my Location Stuttgart
Since my blog is run on a shared hosting I logged in to my third webserver of www.metalcon.de which is a root server. Google coulden’t personalzie the search in this case because Google doesn’t know where the server is located. But Google asks me to enter the location where I am.

Second experiment: How to bypass the gatekeeper

Googleing the weather is kind of boaring so I did some other queries for bars and nightclubs (also in German = “bars und kneipen”) Again I got different results for Koblenz and Stuttgart. The interesting thing is that for both locations the results have been very general inlcuding also city guides from Berlin / Hamburg / Köln Munich and so on. Just the snippets from google maps have been tailored to my location.

Search for bars with a computer located in Koblenz

Search for bars with a computer located in Koblenz but using a proxy server located in Stuttgart

After adding Koblenz to the Query I obtained much better results for koblenz independent of using my proxy or not using the proxy (realize the results are the same but the location flag on the left side changed from Koblenz to Stuttgart.

Search for bars in koblenz with a computer located in Koblenz

Search for bars in koblenz with a computer located in Koblenz but using a proxy server in Stuttgart. the results remain the same as without proxy

We conclude that at the moment google pays much more attention to what you tell google you want to know than to the information google collects while browsing even though it includes information about your location while doing a keyword search it seems that it only does include this information if your search query is very general. Once you ask a more specific Query Google puts your interest as first priority.

What are the 57 signals google uses to filter search results?

Rene — Tue, 17 May 2011 22:58:16 +0000

Since my blog post on Eli Pariser’s Ted talk about the filter bubble became quite popular and a lot of people seem to be interested in which 57 signals Google would use to filter search results I decided to extend the list from my article and list the signals I would use if I was google. It might not be 57 signals but I guess it is enough to get an idea:

Our Search History.
Our location – verfied -> more information
the browser we use.
the browsers version
The computer we use
The language we use
the time we need to type in a query
the time we spend on the search result page
the time between selecting different results for the same query
our operating system
our operating systems version
the resolution of our computer screen
average amount of search requests per day
average amount of search requests per topic (to finish search)
distribution of search services we use (web / images / videos / real time / news / mobile)
average position of search results we click on
time of the day
current date
topics of ads we click on
frequency we click advertising
topics of adsense advertising we click while surfing other websites
frequency we click on adsense advertising on other websites
frequency of searches of domains on Google
use of google.com or google toolbar
our age
our sex
use of “i feel lucky button”
do we use the enter key or mouse to send a search request
do we use keyboard shortcuts to navigate through search results
do we use advanced search commands (how often)
do we use igoogle (which widgets / topics)
where on the screen do we click besides the search results (how often)
where do we move the mouse and mark text in the search results
amount of typos while searching
how often do we use related search queries
how often do we use autosuggestion
how often do we use spell correction
distribution of short / general queries vs. specific / long tail queries
which other google services do we use (gmail / youtube/ maps / picasa /….)
how often do we search for ourself

Uff I have to say after 57 minutes of brainstorming I am running out of ideas for the moment. But this might be because it is already one hour after midnight!
If you have some other ideas for signals or think some of my guesses are totally unreasonable, why don’t you tell me in the comments?
Disclaimer: this list of signals is a pure guess based on my knowledge and education on data mining. Not one signal I name might correspond to the 57 signals google is using. In future I might discuss why each of these signals could be interesting. But remember: as long as you have a high diversity in the distribution you are fine with any list of signals.

Algorithmic Information Filter from Eli Pariser’s TED Talks

Rene — Sun, 13 Mar 2011 13:34:06 +0000

Just today an interesting story came up on a German news site which goes back to Eli Pariser’s (Homepage, follow @Twitter ) talk on TED about a thing he calls the Filter Bubble and how personalization is changing the Internet. Before commenting on his talk I want to personally thank him to use his reputation and start a discussion on such a fundamental and important topic!
UPDATE most likely you are looking for my list of almost 57 signals google might use to filter
I had a short Mail conversation with Eli. He asked me to temporarly remove his TED talk since his book isn’t on sale yet. I found a very similar talk by him which he allowed me to make public in my blog. So here you go folks:

Google is filtering and personalizing search results

Eli is pointing out a thing some people might have already noticed. If two different people search for the same thing on Google it is very probable that the search results will be very different. Google is doing this without telling the user that it is acutally filtering the results based on what the algorithm thinks the user might like. According to Eli Pariser Google is using 57 signals to determine the interest of us. Among those we find:

Our Search History.
Our location
the browser we use.
The computer we use
The language we use
find my list of almost 57 signals google might use to filter

Of course this kind of personalization has its good sides. When I am about to buy a new notebook computer y I definitely want to see different Websites if I live in Germany or in the US. This could be due to tax and shipping fees. Which means that I am most probably interested in local stores and not in oversea shops. Still this personalization and filtering is a huge potential for serious problems. Let me ask a few questions:

What happens if Google misinterprets our 57 signals?
What happens if I only receive results from a certain type?
What if I rely to the fact that I have access to all kind of information?
…

We might think we get all the information we need. But in reality we are becoming blinded by the filters Google is using. We have no chance to determine what other information is filtert and potentially available for a certain topic. On the other hand due to the amount of information we need filters and computers to help us. But the systems should be more transparent!

Facebook is also filtering the newsstream from your friends:

I have always been thinking Facebook’s huge success is strongly correlated to the fact that there is hardly Spam on Facebook and the information economy is very smart and user friendly. The attention of users to status updates is very high making facebook a great place for every company to do online and viral marketing. This of course contributes to Facebook’s reach. In fact the information architecture on Facebook is even so smart that your 20’000 followers on Facebook might not receive your status updates since Facebook’s EdgeRank algorithm decides it is not relevant to your fans or friends. Edgerank might not have 57 signals but it still takes into consideration:

who your fans are friend with
what other news they like
how heavy they have interacted with you in the past
the time passed since your last status update
…

Great news isn’t it? Just compare this with my statement in a recent blog post about creating newsletters as a musician in order to communicate with your fans and not solely rely on other services like Facebook or MySpace.
You don’t believe the Facebook thing? There is a video about the EdgeRank algorithm used by Facebook to determine which status updates should reach us and which shouldn’t. Feel free to have a look and thanks to the guys from Klurig Analytics for producing such a great video resource:

So what can we do?

We should join the discussion in order to pursue Google, Facebook and others to become more transparent.
We should be aware of the fact that a lot of information might not reach us.
Even though more and more information is made available through the Internet we should not become lazy and rely on all these great web services.
Last but not least you can help to spread the information about this topic! As we have seen only if a lot of people spread the information it breaks through the filtering system. And this topic is worth to be spread!

Again thanks a lot to Eli Pariser to start this discussion!