My Filters, Right or Wrong?

Eli Pariser of MoveOn.org spoke to the TED conference back in March. His topic was the spreading use of personalized content delivery by search engines, social media, and online news/current events sites. In this talk, he explains a trend that's disturbed me lately. I've noticed that when I view my Facebook newsfeed in Firefox on my laptop, I don't see anything like the variety of postings and posters as I do when I check it on my iPhone app.

Here's why; over to you, Eli:

Note: If the annoying "loading" circle won't go away, 

click pause and then play to disappear it.

I don't like Big Brother - any Big Brother (or Sister) - keeping such close tabs on my online meanderings. Here's the basic problem, to me: This sort of filtering can only result in a gradual but certain narrowing of the content that is returned to my queries. As an experienced database query writer, I understand the importance of being able to drill down in order to synthesize and manage data. That's fine when I'm going after a specific data set extracted from a known data universe. But it's not at all fine when I'm just noodling around hoping to learn something entirely new in that wild and woolly alternate universe we call the Internet. I don't want to be limited to what I already know - what fun is that? Where's the creativity? Where's the "Aha!" experience? No thanks, Big Sibling - keep yer mitts off my parameters!