Filter Bubble

2023-09-28 00:00:00 / episode: 255

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Script

"The filter bubble.

If you use the internet, you're in the filter bubble.

If you don't think you're using the internet, but you use a smartphone, you're in the filter bubble.

What is the filter bubble? Well, basically every time you do some kind of action on an app on your smartphone or on a website, this can be recorded by somebody somewhere.

OK? They know what you're doing.

They know what you're looking at.

They know what you're reading.

One of the guys that really likes the filter bubble is Google.

They watch what you're doing and they look and if they see that you're looking at uh Cosmetics pages, they're going to send you advertisements about cosmetics.

Even if you don't look at cosmetics pages.

If you look at women's interest pages pages that typically women are interested in, they may send you some cosmetics ads because they know that women need or want cosmetics.

They don't know that you need them or want them.

Maybe you don't want them, but they're gonna try.

Anyway, the more information they have about you, the more select they can be about the ads they show you and that's the filter bubble, that's part of it.

OK? So you don't see ads for things that are not connected to you very often.

But the other part of the filter bubble is when you use social media sites, maybe I don't know if it's social media but like youtube, when they make a recommendation and show you things, they show you things based on your reaction to previous things.

If you like watching videos about cats, they're gonna make more recommendations of videos with cats.

This can be a problem if you like conspiracy theories because they will show you more and more conspiracy theories.

And pretty soon you're starting to believe the conspiracy theories are really, really true because that's all you see.

That's the filter bubble.

They've filtered out all the other stuff they think doesn't apply to you and they show you more of what you've been watching already.

So you end up seeing a lot of the same thing.

It's kind of boring and it's quite dangerous in fact, because some people start to believe things that they otherwise wouldn't believe because they watch too much of it.

Stay clear of the filter bubble."