"Filter bubbles" Within the Internet

It is amazing how again and again we are surprised to know the amount of control other people have over things we considered to be free with. The internet is seen as a place where all kinds of information is at your fingertips, ready to be discovered by us. However, companies such as Google, Facebook, Yahoo, etc are invisibly controlling the flow of information that we receive. How? Through the use of “filters”. These filters or algorithms are designed to monitor our browsing to determine our interests and therefore determine what information to show us. For example, I tend to scour the gaming sites, looking for updates on the latest Nintendo games. Now if I log into facebook, suddenly all the advertisements at the side are mostly relevant at what I had search and read in the sites I chose before. Google “video games” and chances are that the majority of the results I get will be related to Nintendo. In short, these filters personalize our experience of the internet to our wants, but not our needs.
I do believe these “filter bubbles” are becoming a danger to our online lives. At first, it may sound quite nice to have the web personalized to what we'd like to see… but is what we like to see always a good thing? We also need to see and know about things that aren’t necessarily are pleasant or very interesting to us. Certain things such as issues or conflicts happening around the world could be easily accessible, but if these filters determine what we should see, then we can be seriously lacking in knowledge. As the saying goes “knowledge is power” and if we live our lives clueless to the outside world, then how will humanity progress as a whole? Limiting us in what we are able to see by others not only allows for easier manipulation but leads us to live close-minded lives, not hearing both sides of a story.

Social Networking in Obama's 2008 Campaign

     Perhaps the one of the main reasons Barack Obama was elected was because his campaign was able to not only use the internet to gain support, but the Obama campaign also provided the tools to allow their supports to contribute to the cause as well. Traditionally, it would be mostly the job of campaign committee to organize events and recruit supporters towards the candidate. However, with the ever increasing usage of the social media, now it is easier than ever to successfully gain broader attention and attain supporters without wasting too much effort.

     As mentioned in the article, the Obama campaign set up a social networking site called www.my.barackobama.com. This site was set up to allow users to create an account and contribute to the campaign by giving them the tools to allow them to organize events. The website provided the tools for users to round up volunteers within their communities to get together and plan events. The website provided contact details of all the users, making it easy to communicate with each other.

     Perhaps was made it very successful was the fact that the people themselves were able to navigate the site without so much difficulty. You can only do so much on a site if the website itself doesn’t work. People tend to get discouraged quite easily if the site is lagging or showing error messages too often. The article mentions for example that McCain also had a social networking site, but it was rather ineffective because users had too much trouble navigating the site. The site has to be maintained and updated regularly if you are to keep people visiting your site.

     In addition, people nowadays are constantly using social networking sites in their daily lives. People post on Facebook, tweets and blog everyday and millions of people around the world are able to see it. To have an online presence can give you a very good advantage in being recognizable and also to effectively make you message known to wider audiences.