This May Shock/Depress you…
Media
10th October 2011
And there I was thinking the Internet was a democratising force. I noticed this phenomenon too, and have since started carrying out a few simple tests. Sometimes it becomes very difficult to find what you’re looking for from where you are. This is why.
11 comments on “This May Shock/Depress you…”
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Well, that was seriously disturbing. Who would’ve thought? And it explains why some of my (what I thought were “blockhead”) friends could not find the same stories on google I was recommending with a specific keyword search. Thank you for getting this information “out there” — I for one will pass it on.
Oh wow… Might share this, this is very good – well, I mean, scary!
After the recent ‘improvements’ on FB – and them being outed re their cookies…a hitherto ‘unknown bug’, my lilywhite southern ass! – I spent the best part of a week deleting everything off my wall, deleting apps, deleting various ‘friends’, saving and downloading important info(photos, notes, etc) and deleting them, too. I don’t post, comment or ‘like’ peoples posts anymore, I’ve had to unsubscribe(a ridiculous, redundant feature in itself) from some friends because I don’t want *their* friends witterings all over my newsfeed. The lack-of-privacy issue will only get worse if/when the Timeline features are rolled out. ‘Frictionless sharing’, I think Zuckerburg calls it. I think the rest of us would call it ‘fencing stolen goods’.
As for the algorithms…a while back, I managed to convince FB that I was in Foreign Parts just to mess with their ads, which insisted I was an overweight, drink-addled, chain-smoking, incontinent old biddy whose non-existant marriage was on the rocks, who was in need of a rest home and life insurance, yet who wanted to ‘meet single men!!’. Now the adverts speak to me in Portuguese, and for all I know they could be attempting to sell me plans to make my own nuclear reactor and shares in a white slave trade franchise.
BTW, shall we do a mini-experiment here? The first five results for me Googling “Bryant and May” (incl brackets) brought up:
Wiki, entry for B&M
Wiki again, entry for B&M factory in Melbourne, Australia
Wiki again, entry for Bow Quarter
Admin’s blog, and
An ebookee.org link (never heard of ’em)
Wiki Entry for B&M
Wiki for Bow Quarter
This blog, B&M category
The Match Girls Strike (on spartacus)
Mark Pack mention of PCU website.
Wiki entry for B&M (v. Christopher Fowler) and a UK company
Wiki for the factory in Melbourne
Bow Quarter
Chris’ blog
Images for Bryant & May – match books, factory, etc.
The Matchgirls Strike
Doesn’t vary very much but certainly some.
Gretta – can I ask what you stil do on FB? That sounds a bit rude but I’m just interested as I’ve been thinking of paring my FB info down too. Cheers.
BangBang!! – No worries. Right now I’m just using it to follow what’s going on with the things that I like. The likes of admin here, and other authors, musicians or tv shows, the radio stations I listen to, the organisations I support, etc. With the groups/people I’ve retained as friends/likes they often post things on FB that don’t show up anywhere else, and if I need to talk to people one-on-one on FB, I’ll do so by pm.
Thanks Gretta – much appreciated!
What is probably more disturbing is that the same ‘algorithm’ based rules/logic are driving the money markets and thus we tumble into greed driven chaos!
Is that how the day trader software works? Read an explanation once but since I wouldn’t dream of trying it on my own I didn’t commit it to memory.