[chris_va]

People keep worrying about filter bubbles, which is a rational but misguided fear. Having written some of these systems (Google News), it really does not happen the way people imagine it would.

At the end of the day, the factors that define a good curation framework do not actually create a filter bubble. People love serendipitously discovering new content, and the optimizing for the "best article" does not actually optimize for a singular viewpoint. As a result, any curation system that produces a filter bubble will not actually feel as good of a system to the end user, and will not get as much adoption.

[TelmoMenezes]

Chris, in my view the problem with this reasoning is that you are assuming that people are good at noticing that they are inside a filter bubble.

I have a less optimistic perspective: I suspect people want to feel like they are being exposed to diverse information while not having their beliefs or preferences challenged. This makes sense, considering that our cognitive resources are limited and being exposed to information that contradicts our beliefs is a psychologically painful experience.

So I claim that this is a cultural problem that companies have no incentive to solve. I am not claiming that I have a solution, nor do I endorse regulation or (shudder) government intervention on cultural dynamics.

I suspect that we more and more belong to tribes that are divided across intelectual instead of geographical lines. Surely I have more in common with you than most of my neighbours (just going by the fact that we are both participating in the same niche forum). The problem is that nation states are still geographical and have to arrive at some democratic consensus to avoid tyranny. The avenues by which such consensus can be achieved are getting narrower. Maybe we will transcend nations, maybe we will devolve into tyranny. I am hoping for the former, but become worried when I see people believing that the problem doesn't exist.

I try do as I preach, so I am open to having my opinion challenged :)

[walterbell]

What do you think about the approach taken by http://random.co?

http://www.datascienceweekly.org/blog/19-random-predictive-c...

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Everyone's reality consists of unique connections between things. To someone "art" is more strongly connected to "abstract art" than "photorealistic art". For someone else "art" refers most strongly to "oil paintings". Our system tries to capture and understand what kind of unique connections an individual has. Random tries to understand what "art" means to you personally and what kind of related things might be interesting to you.

The app also allows you to connect things freely thus letting you express both your rational and irrational self. There're no universal categories or connections between different things - rather it's about an individual's own "ontology" that's created through usage. The "associative ontology" evolves continuously both through the actions of the individual and other people using the system.

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[declan]

Yep. I’ve heard complaints about “filter bubbles” before, but have always found these to be entirely theoretical — not a critique of an actual implemented system. In reality, as <chris_va> says, a “filter bubble” is different from a “viewpoint bubble.”

An example: If our recommendation engine at http://recent.io/ concludes you’re interested in Barack Obama, it will (surprise!) recommend articles about Barack Obama. It doesn’t filter by political viewpoint. You’ll get articles from both lefty sources and right-leaning sources.

Also, of course, we offer “top news” if you prefer!

[paletoy]

Chris, any tips on how find good curated sources ?