Re: filter bubble study
Thank you for the link :-) All that, and yet the study hasn't made any significant impact in the theory of filter bubbles in real-life application; indeed, it appears as if the "study" has been completely discounted.
As it should be.
The "study" was massively flawed. Major points:
1) No effort was made to study or discount the well known YouTube filter bubble, a bubble that has been well verified by users throughout the world;
2) the study used an opt-in plug-in for Chrome and Firefox. The MASSIVE errors of their implementation are:
a) all users were allowed to remain logged in to their online accounts, including Google;
b) no latent user browser data was demanded to be cleared, that is existing cookies were kept on all systems;
c) they used an installed plugin sample size of 4,384 - not exactly large as compared to worldwide internet usage;
d) all plugin installations occurred in one geopolitical region (!), and finally;
e) the plugin auto ran a background search of only 16 search terms.
So:
Any bias already set, to any user who volunteered for the study, was not reset due to that fact that clearing cookies was not demanded as a prerequisite to participate.
The users were not required to log out of, or prevented from using, any of their Google services. So the object in study - Google - was allowed to continue to openly interact with the users of the study without oversight of said study, including any possible butterfly effects said usage may incur.
The search terms were relegated to 16 political terms, "limited to the seven major parties and their respective party leaders", and *exclusively* inside Germany. But then they draw conclusions on Google search regionalization.
Flawed? I think you should have a good picture by now o.O All one has to *do* is look at your own Google search results...then clear your cookies, especially the persistent ones.
And let's not talk about your search return differences after clearing all your YouTube data O.O That's a completely different world you've just opened yourself back up to when you do that for yourself!