[mhb]

Pariser's best point is that we should be aware that what we are seeing is actually being filtered, but I think that he is overstating the cost of personalized filtering and understating its benefit.

There is too much information available to view it unfiltered and it's unclear what that even means. If Google returned the same search results to everyone, that doesn't mean its unfiltered - it determined what to return based on what other people wanted to see. You're just seeing things with the same filter as everyone else. Why is that better? If you think it's better, consider that the reason there is so much trivial crap on TV is because the same people who watch it are the ones generating the aggregate filter.

Old media was already filtered. Just because everyone reads the same NY Times doesn't mean that it doesn't have a ____ slant and that all its subscribers aren't being affected by that confirmation bias. How many people who subscribe to the NYT also subscribe to Reason magazine to get the libertarian viewpoint on current events?

A way this could become better is for the personalizing algorithm to become smarter. Instead of showing you conservative viewpoints because you click on conservative opinions more than liberal ones, a smarter filter would make a higher level assessment of you. So if you click on some liberal ones, maybe it concludes something about you instead of something more trivial about what you look at - maybe it concludes that you like to hear other viewpoints and modifies your filter to better suit that conclusion.