I’ll admit: I’m more likely to click on a kitten video than a senator’s speech, but the uncertainty of which party line I’d cross kept me engaged.
In 2007, Jessica Seinfeld, the wife of comedian Jerry Seinfeld, wrote “Deceptively Delicious,” a cookbook for parents weary from the work of making their children eat healthy food. In her most famous concoction, she slipped carrots and spinach into brownies.
Think of YouTube Town Hall as a sort of digital disguise for sneaking information vegetables into an information dessert. The idea of vegetables and desserts came up in a recent TED speech by Eli Pariser, the founder of the liberal get-out-the-vote organization MoveOn.org. Pariser spoke about the increasing danger of the personalization of the Web, a topic he addresses in his recently released book, “The Filter Bubble.”
As social media sites, news organizations and advertisers all try to better target the user with personalized content, people are losing the crucial exposure to new ideas that allow us to be fully informed citizens of the world.
Pariser, an early user of the Web to motivate large groups of people, once saw the Internet as a way toward a more democratic future, as information was taken out of the hands of gatekeepers like the media and given to everyone. Ten years after starting MoveOn, he started to see that the opposite was happening: Walls were being built up around common beliefs, common interests.
More and more sites rely on algorithmic data that use clues people leave in their browser history to filter their search results in smaller, more specific ways. Pariser cites an example of a friend involved in journalism and a friend who worked in a different field. During the Egyptian revolution, when they would type the word “Egypt” into the search browser, the journalist would see news items about the uprising; the other would see Wikipedia and tourism sites.
In Facebook, the friends you interact with more — including clicking on their news links — get a higher rating in your news feed.
Jonathan Kay, author of the new book “Among the Truthers,” blames this siphoning off of information as one reason for the rise of conspiracy theorists in the United States, endangering an open dialogue between political parties. “From the very instant they first boot up their computer in the morning, their in-boxes comprise an unbroken catalog of outrage stories ideologically tailored to their pre-existing obsessions,” Kay writes.
People can make some changes to defend themselves against machines tailor-making their online experience. Pariser recommends erasing cookie histories under your browser’s settings, turning off targeted ads by installing opt-out extensions on your browsers and removing personal data from online profiles. However, he believes the onus lies with major technology companies to implement ways for people to understand how results are being filtered and to provide ways of expanding filters.
Enter YouTube Town Hall and other games that try to bring new information to people packaged in a way they might be more willing to take in.
“When you walk into a game environment, you’re stepping into the shoes of a character, and you don’t know what you’re going to encounter,” said Mallika Dutt, founder of Breakthrough, a global human rights organization. Dutt just launched America 2049 on Facebook. It’s a game that will roll out over 12 weeks, asking people to hunt through a futuristic Portland in search of an escaped quarantine victim. The game slowly walks you through the history of human rights issues in the United States but gussied up in the guise of a spy saga. Games allow “people to enter into alternative realities, to change their way of thinking,” Dutt said.
The games may not be enough to protect against the ever-rising online walls, but they’re at least letting a little light shine through.
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