Eli Pariser – Beware online “filter bubbles” – TED
As web companies strive to tailor their services to our personal tastes, there’s a dangerous unintended consequence: We get trapped in a “filter bubble” and don’t get exposed to information that could challenge or broaden our worldview.
The better we get at modeling user preferences, the more accurately we construct recommendation engines that fully capture user attention. In a way, we are building personalized propaganda engines that feeds users content which makes them feel good and throws away the uncomfortable bits. We used to be able to hold media accountable for misinforming the public. Now we only have ourselves to blame.
The device in your purse or jeans that you think is a cellphone — guess again. It is a tracking device that happens to make calls.
Education, like pretty much everything else in our lives these days, is driven by data. Our childrens’ data. A whole lot of it.
Nearly everything they do at school can be — and often is — recorded and tracked, and parents don’t always know what information is being collected, where it’s going, or how it’s being used.
La Quadrature du Net publishes “Reclaim Our Privacy”, a three-minute movie that explains the threat to, the importance of protecting, and the tools to reclaim our privacy online. The movie is released under CC BY-SA, so feel free to share or remix it!
What can be guessed about you from your online behavior? Two computer privacy experts — economist Alessandro Acquisti and computer scientist Jennifer Golbeck — on how little we know about how much others know.
A large number of apps demand access to your private information such as location, contacts and text messages. How would you react if real people demanded the same?
As you surf the Web, information is being collected about you. Web tracking is not 100% evil — personal data can make your browsing more efficient; cookies can help your favorite websites stay in business. But, says Gary Kovacs, it’s your right to know what data is being collected about you. He unveils a Firefox add-on, Collusion, to do just that. (Update: Collusion is now called Lightbeam.)
Revelations about government surveillance have motivated a lot of reactions, some of which take into account that we gain something for some of the data we give up in our day-to-day lives. But the transaction is different when the government is involved.
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