Earlier I posted something about Huffington Post and how they were driving me crazy with all their numbered lists. I was seeing a constant flow of these articles in my Facebook feed so I posited that maybe Facebook thinks I want to see articles with numbers in them so it keeps suggesting them to me. Well, Yahoo News does just that and really had me going for a brief moment.
I used to check Yahoo News every day, couple of times each day usually. At some point in the past, I clicked on an article about a UFO sighting. I'm not a hard core UFO guy but I do find the stories interesting on occasion. The next day I noticed another UFO article in the Yahoo feed and I thought, "Hmmm, interesting, two UFO articles in a short span of time." Then the next day, two more UFO articles, "Holy Smokes! We're being INVADED!"
That's when it hit me. Yahoo thinks I want to read UFO articles because I clicked on one, so it keeps showing me more. I suppose this could be a useful tool to have, but it can also be a little dangerous. If it keeps suggesting articles that it thinks I might want to see, over time it could easily distort my perception like it did briefly with the UFO article.
Yahoo ended up changing their news site and I hate the new format so, I stopped using it. Now I use Google News. Google is a little better about suggesting articles though because they have a section of news that says, "Hey, these are articles we think you might want to read because you searched for/viewed/whatevered this one term." Then it gives you the option to say, "yes, I am interested in that" or "no, that's not my bag."
Yet another stunning example of how people's perceptions can be distorted by the news media.
I used to check Yahoo News every day, couple of times each day usually. At some point in the past, I clicked on an article about a UFO sighting. I'm not a hard core UFO guy but I do find the stories interesting on occasion. The next day I noticed another UFO article in the Yahoo feed and I thought, "Hmmm, interesting, two UFO articles in a short span of time." Then the next day, two more UFO articles, "Holy Smokes! We're being INVADED!"
That's when it hit me. Yahoo thinks I want to read UFO articles because I clicked on one, so it keeps showing me more. I suppose this could be a useful tool to have, but it can also be a little dangerous. If it keeps suggesting articles that it thinks I might want to see, over time it could easily distort my perception like it did briefly with the UFO article.
Yahoo ended up changing their news site and I hate the new format so, I stopped using it. Now I use Google News. Google is a little better about suggesting articles though because they have a section of news that says, "Hey, these are articles we think you might want to read because you searched for/viewed/whatevered this one term." Then it gives you the option to say, "yes, I am interested in that" or "no, that's not my bag."
Yet another stunning example of how people's perceptions can be distorted by the news media.
No comments:
Post a Comment