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Are customized search results polarizing opinions?

Started by Mesozoic Mister Nigel, January 29, 2017, 09:16:29 PM

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LMNO

I don't have much to contribute, other than to say I'm really enjoying this thread so far.

00.dusk

Quote from: Mesozoic Mister Nigel on February 01, 2017, 08:55:06 PM
Quote from: 00.dusk on February 01, 2017, 08:27:58 PM
Absolutely. Now imagine those companies reacting to the death of targeted search results. Could be I'm overly paranoid, though? I don't know, my headmeats aren't cooperating to return me to the same train of thought I had last post, so I'm finding it difficult to form a coherent argument. For now, I'll concede the point and cut the threadcrapping.

You might be able to make an argument that companies will be distressed by the loss of targeted search results, but you would have to examine a lot of angles to be convincing. For example, targeted results mean that a company's page is more likely to be a top result for someone who has shopped with them before. That means more exposure to current customers, but less exposure to people who have never heard of your company before. Is that advantageous? It really depends on a lot.

Then there's the question of whether those companies being dismayed has any impact on Google's bottom line. Does Google have a reason to give a fuck whether they like it? If companies feel the need to step up advertising to make up for losing targeted results, then no; quite the opposite. Would that be the case? No idea.

You aren't really crapping up the thread BTW. At least, not in my opinion. I am simply responding to point out gaps and encourage you to develop your completely relevant thought into a cohesive argument.

I think I was almost certainly just being paranoid. It felt like a given that any attempt to somehow reduce the amount of echo chamber radicalization in the world would be resisted by everyone who isn't a full and accredited biped due to a number of short-term, marginal but concrete benefits that might outweigh (in their tiny heads) the long-term, serious but abstract societal benefits of removing targeted search results.

To me, threadcrapping definitely includes having an inability to put together a rational, coherent argument, which was the entire issue I was having. And now I see why it was difficult -- I was missing perspective, which your post gives me.

P3nT4gR4m

You want to get rid of targetted search results, I'll fight it all the way. I remember how long I used to spend on google wading through pages upon pages of bullshit that had nothing to do with my query, just because a couple of words were the same. Fuck that noise.

Have a think about this

QuoteRoof's radicalization began, as he later wrote in an online manifesto, when he typed the words "black on White crime" into Google and found what he described as "pages upon pages of these brutal black on White murders."

So before he even looked at google he was interested in "Black on white crime" The problem here is not google doing what it's for and searching the internet on a user's behalf. That's just a f'kin scapegoat. Why is a 20 year old redneck typing "black on white crime" into a search engine in the first place? Pretty sure the real problem lies at the bottom of that particular rabbit hole. Why did "Council of Conservative Citizens" score so high on pagerank? That's somewhere else to have a dig. An indexing service that scans a trillion pages a second and takes me straight to the information I want to find? Yeah, do me a favour and leave that shit the fuck alone.

I'm up to my arse in Brexit Numpties, but I want more.  Target-rich environments are the new sexy.
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Faust

The only real way to fight it is to encourage competition:
I'm not a DuckDuckGo Jehova's Witness, but we need to support other search engines in order for them to flourish they need traffic for ad revenue or donations. Support the projects that provide transparency on their algorithms if you want an open web.
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Q. G. Pennyworth

Quote from: Mesozoic Mister Nigel on February 01, 2017, 08:55:06 PM
Quote from: 00.dusk on February 01, 2017, 08:27:58 PM
Absolutely. Now imagine those companies reacting to the death of targeted search results. Could be I'm overly paranoid, though? I don't know, my headmeats aren't cooperating to return me to the same train of thought I had last post, so I'm finding it difficult to form a coherent argument. For now, I'll concede the point and cut the threadcrapping.

You might be able to make an argument that companies will be distressed by the loss of targeted search results, but you would have to examine a lot of angles to be convincing. For example, targeted results mean that a company's page is more likely to be a top result for someone who has shopped with them before. That means more exposure to current customers, but less exposure to people who have never heard of your company before. Is that advantageous? It really depends on a lot.

I don't have a fully formed response to this, but I remember in reading about Target's super creepy profiling (the thing where they tagged a young woman as pregnant and started advertising to her as such before she told her family) that consumers are really serious about the ruts they get in, and it usually takes a major life change (such as a pregnancy or moving) to get them to switch it up. Being able to target people at those junctures is way more efficient than blanket advertising.

Mesozoic Mister Nigel

Quote from: Q. G. Pennyworth on February 02, 2017, 12:03:14 PM
Quote from: Mesozoic Mister Nigel on February 01, 2017, 08:55:06 PM
Quote from: 00.dusk on February 01, 2017, 08:27:58 PM
Absolutely. Now imagine those companies reacting to the death of targeted search results. Could be I'm overly paranoid, though? I don't know, my headmeats aren't cooperating to return me to the same train of thought I had last post, so I'm finding it difficult to form a coherent argument. For now, I'll concede the point and cut the threadcrapping.

You might be able to make an argument that companies will be distressed by the loss of targeted search results, but you would have to examine a lot of angles to be convincing. For example, targeted results mean that a company's page is more likely to be a top result for someone who has shopped with them before. That means more exposure to current customers, but less exposure to people who have never heard of your company before. Is that advantageous? It really depends on a lot.

I don't have a fully formed response to this, but I remember in reading about Target's super creepy profiling (the thing where they tagged a young woman as pregnant and started advertising to her as such before she told her family) that consumers are really serious about the ruts they get in, and it usually takes a major life change (such as a pregnancy or moving) to get them to switch it up. Being able to target people at those junctures is way more efficient than blanket advertising.

When I was running a business, I spent money trying to reach people who were NOT my current customers.
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Prelate Diogenes Shandor

Quote from: Faust on January 30, 2017, 12:04:46 AM
One of the worst that directly impacts me has been when I am searching for C# or code related stuff, and I come home and searches start pushing those.

I've started using duck duck go for home use and google for work.

Personally, in addition to Duck Duck Go, I also use the Ghostery plugin and never log into my google account for anything other than my gmail email, (which is not registered under my real name)
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tyrannosaurus vex

 While it seems like an insurmountable task to persuade people to care about objectivity and information quality, it turns out that the techniques used to provide customized search results are the same ones that allow for mass surveillance on the internet. A nice side effect of becoming more anonymous online is that you'll also get much less of this targeted information. So maybe a push toward making people paranoid would help in releasing people from (some of) this echo chamber phenomenon.
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tyrannosaurus vex

this is useless. but... idk, maybe somewhere to start.
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minuspace

Quote from: V3X on February 06, 2017, 02:44:16 PM
While it seems like an insurmountable task to persuade people to care about objectivity and information quality, it turns out that the techniques used to provide customized search results are the same ones that allow for mass surveillance on the internet. A nice side effect of becoming more anonymous online is that you'll also get much less of this targeted information. So maybe a push toward making people paranoid would help in releasing people from (some of) this echo chamber phenomenon.

Yea, but the paranoia would only work tangentially.  A subject thereof (paranoid agent) would receive less target results, however the operant intention is usually to evade detection.  Release from the echo chamber may temporarily break the spell of confirmation bias, however it does not ensure that the subject will take information objectivity-quality to heart.  I'm thinking...  If instead there was a way to challenge subjects core identity, then they listen.  So, the trick would be to show people that by manipulating their search results, you can manipulate their actions, get them to do something they would not otherwise have done.

Targeted results stop you from acting freely.

Some kind of undeniable "before and after" snapshot probably needs to be presented to subject or they will insist ad nauseum that it was their idea all along.

Mesozoic Mister Nigel

Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on February 02, 2017, 09:43:24 AM
You want to get rid of targetted search results, I'll fight it all the way. I remember how long I used to spend on google wading through pages upon pages of bullshit that had nothing to do with my query, just because a couple of words were the same. Fuck that noise.

Have a think about this

QuoteRoof's radicalization began, as he later wrote in an online manifesto, when he typed the words "black on White crime" into Google and found what he described as "pages upon pages of these brutal black on White murders."

So before he even looked at google he was interested in "Black on white crime" The problem here is not google doing what it's for and searching the internet on a user's behalf. That's just a f'kin scapegoat. Why is a 20 year old redneck typing "black on white crime" into a search engine in the first place? Pretty sure the real problem lies at the bottom of that particular rabbit hole. Why did "Council of Conservative Citizens" score so high on pagerank? That's somewhere else to have a dig. An indexing service that scans a trillion pages a second and takes me straight to the information I want to find? Yeah, do me a favour and leave that shit the fuck alone.

So learn to search better. I can, and you can too.

And yes, his results reinforced his pre-existing biases. Congratulations, you got the main point of the article.
"I'm guessing it was January 2007, a meeting in Bethesda, we got a bag of bees and just started smashing them on the desk," Charles Wick said. "It was very complicated."


Mesozoic Mister Nigel

Quote from: V3X on February 06, 2017, 02:44:16 PM
While it seems like an insurmountable task to persuade people to care about objectivity and information quality, it turns out that the techniques used to provide customized search results are the same ones that allow for mass surveillance on the internet. A nice side effect of becoming more anonymous online is that you'll also get much less of this targeted information. So maybe a push toward making people paranoid would help in releasing people from (some of) this echo chamber phenomenon.

I would say that I hate to sound like a socialist, but I don't hate it because I am one.

While education is certainly the solution to almost all our problems, well... yeah. You can see where that goes. There are social protections against rampant exploitation of an uninformed populace for good reasons.
"I'm guessing it was January 2007, a meeting in Bethesda, we got a bag of bees and just started smashing them on the desk," Charles Wick said. "It was very complicated."


Mesozoic Mister Nigel

Maybe I should say "were". There were social protections against rampant exploitation of an uninformed populace for a reason.

Roughly the same reason we have had truth in advertising laws, the EPA, fluoridated water, and mandatory vaccination.

Anybody remember what happened after Reagan deregulated the airlines?
"I'm guessing it was January 2007, a meeting in Bethesda, we got a bag of bees and just started smashing them on the desk," Charles Wick said. "It was very complicated."


Mesozoic Mister Nigel

Quote from: LuciferX on February 07, 2017, 06:41:11 PM
Targeted results stop you from acting freely.

This right here is the heart of the matter.
"I'm guessing it was January 2007, a meeting in Bethesda, we got a bag of bees and just started smashing them on the desk," Charles Wick said. "It was very complicated."


Junkenstein

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