Category: Filter Bubble

Scroogle!

What a discovery; Microsoft has started this initiative (in a lack of a better term) where by means of infographics, text, animations and imagery, they explain what, in their opinion, Google should and shouldn’t be doing, and why it is better to use Microsoft Outlook.

http://www.scroogled.com/

Under ‘Our Position’ you find these three points:

Here are some examples of things Outlook.com does not do, but Gmail does:

  • Go through the contents of your sent and received email messages to display targeted ads
  • Go through the contents of your incoming email from other email services for the purpose of targeting ads
  • Go through the contents of your entire inbox for the purpose of targeting ads

Have a look yourself on their website, there is a Valentine’s Day-special under ‘The Latest’, enjoy!

Scroogle

Flutrends

I would like to share an interesting and quite helpful side of search engines and their personalised searches. Google Flu Trends http://www.google.org/flutrends/ch/#CH  helps you to follow the ‘evolution’ of a flu in your region. It tracks search entries of that topic and combines it with the time of the entry and Google maps. Of course, a too paranoid view on this isn’t constructive, but I think that it is important to mention both negative and positive aspects of personalisation in online searching.

Privacyfix

Duck Duck Go, the amasing search engine I wrote about earlier, suggested to me this option to keep an eye on your information:

https://privacyfix.com/start

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For now this is an add-on that works with Firefox and Chrome, but they are working on a version for Safari. I will try it out and report back! And if you do as well, feel free to share any thoughts about it.

Collusion by disconnect

What a superb discovery:

https://disconnect.me/tools

‘We think your personal info should be treated with respect, that you should be the steward of your digital self, that you shouldown your own data.’

There isn’t much more to say, just have a look and discover this to yourself. Don’t forget to read their privacy policy: ‘Our privacy policy, in a sentence: We don’t collect your IP address or any other personal info, except your email address if you ask us to write you.’

When It Comes to Politics, the Internet is Closing Minds

I have been given this link to a video which I would like to share here. It is a debate on wether ‘the internet is closing minds when it comes to politics’. Robert Rosenkranz is introducing the four panelists, Eli Pariser, Jacob Weisberg, Siva Vaidhyanathan, and Evgeny Morozov. It might not be obvious from the title why this video is relevant to my research focus, but as soon as you listen into it you will discover the many ways my research will refer to this.

http://fora.tv/2012/04/17/When_It_Comes_to_Politics_the_Internet_is_Closing_Minds