[Foundation-l] On curiosity, cats and scapegoats

[Tom Morris]

On Thursday, September 8, 2011, Kim Bruning wrote:

> That said, even a self controlled filter can be problematic qua bias
> (especially if you're not sure entirely how to control it) [1]
>
> [1] http://www.thefilterbubble.com/ted-talk


I'm not sure what I think about the image filter, but that's a pretty ropey
comparison:

With the proposed image filter, the knowledge that a filter is in place
would be quite obvious: there'd be a big gray box with "Image Removed" or
something. And if you want to see them, you are only a click away from
loading them.

And how is bias being introduced into my views by being able to go to [[Cock
ring]] and not seeing a picture of a penis? I fail to see how being able to
opt-out of saucy sex pics actually moves us in any significant way closer to
a world where we live in "filter bubbles". The main problem stated by Eli
Pariser is that the filter bubbles are created without consent or knowledge
of the user - his example is of political conservatives whose posts
disappeared from his Facebook stream and the same Google searches leading to
different results for different people. The proposed image filter wouldn't
have those problems: it's just when you go to a page which has, say, sexual
content, you'd know exactly what had been left out.

Again, I'm not sure whether I support the image filter, but it's a rubbish
argument to say that it creates filter bubble-type scenarios.

-- 
Tom Morris
<http://tommorris.org/>


-- 
Tom Morris
<http://tommorris.org/>