The Filter Bubble

Avoiding the Filter Bubble

Avoiding the search engine filter bubble is easy: simply use a search engine that does not do a personalized search. Here is three of the better ones:

Duck Duck Go
Start Page
ixquick

Breaking your Facebook or other social network filter bubble will take a more concerted effort on your part. You will have to actively click on and comment on posts you do not agree with, which seems unnatural.

Yahoo is a great example of a website that is heading more in the direction of internet personalization rather than running our clicks through an algorithm and choosing what we see. Since 2009 when yahoo started their crack personalization team, the number of times people actually clicked on their “Today” news tab has increased 270%. The reason being people reach Yahoo‛s homepage and when they see news headlines under that section, they are close or relevant to the news happening around the user.

Photo credit: Gerd Altmann