Category: Eli Pariser

Categories
Climate Donald Trump Electric Vehicles Eli Pariser Episode Facebook Filter Bubble Google Joe Biden PNAS Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Project 2025 Social Media Sociology WSUM

TMI 12/15/2023 – Is the Filter Bubble the Wrong Mechanism to Explain Social Media Toxicity?, How Trump’s Project 2025 is a Next Level Disaster for the Climate and more

We’ve reported here on TMI on Eli Pariser’s “Filter Bubble” concept since its debut in 2010 at his Ted talk: the idea that Google was selectively feeding results back to the user that the user agreed with, making it so that one person’s search results were often vastly different than another’s. Mr Pariser pointed out that by putting us all in these Filter Bubbles, we couldn’t agree on what was even factual. A new article published in the PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences) journal, however, says that is all wrong when applied to social media giants like Facebook, where they aim to increase your focus and time spent there by enhancing the chance of you getting made angry by what you see. We examine these competing concepts.

Then, we go over how the media is gleefully playing up any and all minutiae of Trump’s intentions for his second term except for one key part: how the Project 2025 plan that he’s assimilated is catastrophic for any chance we have to keep the environment from completely collapsing.

Finally, we present an update to a story we went over a few weeks back, putting a spotlight on how the EV infrastructure promised by Biden’s funding in 2021 is FINALLY starting to come to fruition. All this and more on TMI for Friday, December 15, 2023 – listen in for YOUR Cure for the Common Media!

Categories
Acapulco Climate Eli Pariser Episode Facebook Filter Bubble Google Hurricane Otis Meta Spotify TikTok WSUM YouTube

TMI 10/27/2023 – Filter Bubble Redux: How Pariser’s Predictions Fell Short of the Real Outcome, Hurricane Otis Punctuates Release of New Climate Crisis Report, more

Back near the beginning of TMI with Aldous Tyler in 2010, we reported on Eli Pariser’s Ted Talk that introduced the world to the “Filter Bubble”. This phenomenon, he said, was caused by Google’s search algorithms, which would selectively feed you results similar to ones you had interacted with before. That would cause your Google searches to no longer match anyone else’s, and would feed you ideas you agreed with far more than those that would challenge your beliefs. Fast forward to today, and his predictions that this “echo chamber” effect could negatively impact society seem far too mild. We discuss how TikTok, Spotify, YouTube, Meta’s platforms and many others have stanched the flow of ideas and how to fight back.

Then, as I was preparing to tell you about the latest report from scientists on the climate, noting that we may very well have gone past several tipping points, Hurricane Otis became a demonstration of how we are in unknown territory by unprecedently ramping up from a weak tropical storm to a 165 MPH monster Category 5 hurricane in roughly 24 hours, slamming into the Acapulco area with no warning to evacuate the million-plus people there. We discuss how this alarming development might become the new normal. All that and more on TMI for Friday, October 27, 2023 – get YOUR Cure for the Common Media!