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The Internet Technology

Preference Engines Side-Effects in Online Retail 177

Posted by samzenpus from the if-you-like-a-you'll-love-a+ dept.
jasonla writes "The Los Angeles Times ran a Column One article about the impact preference engines have on consumer buying habits. From the article: 'In the physical world, I bump into all kinds of people by chance. But online, if recommenders were perfect, I can have the option of talking to only people who are just like me. There's a danger that if we don't have some level of shared interaction, it can be destructive to our social cohesion.'"
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Preference Engines Side-Effects in Online Retail

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  • Cliche. (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 21, 2005 @09:00PM (#13618514)
    "I can have the option of talking to only people who are just like me. "

    Welcome to slashdot.

  • Perfect (Score:2, Funny)

    by superub3r ( 915084 )
    "But online, if recommenders were perfect, I can have the option of talking to only people who are just like me."

    Does that mean you are perfect?

  • Is this for real? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 21, 2005 @09:02PM (#13618526)
    Humanity is going to disperse as a social construct because Amazon wants you to buy some additional shit?

    I don't get this... are we going to have preference engines in our daily lives? at the store? at the bar? How is this affecting more than 2% of your waking lifetime?

    WAH WAH WAH they don't work anyway. Next post.
    • . . .they don't work anyway.

      Tell me about it. The Amazon preference engine keeps trying to sell me underwear, but now that I'm old I don't wear underwear, I don't go to church and I don't cut my hair.

      Clearly these underwear wearing people they keep trying to "match me up" with are rather unlike myself.

      And two parrotheads are obviously not better than one.

      KFG

    • Re:Is this for real? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by aussersterne ( 212916 ) on Wednesday September 21, 2005 @09:35PM (#13618692) Homepage
      Somehow people often seem to assume that only catastrophic events can have any real impact on the social order. Not true. The Internet began as nothing more than a technical experiment at three academic sites involving only a few people. The World Wide Web was initially just an obscure application written by an academic geek and shared with a few other academic geeks.

      Listen to the places that you named. The store. The bar. How do you decide where to go to the store? To the bar? Most people I know these days decide where to shop, where to play, where to drink, and where to stay at least in part (if not entirely) based on websites and website reviews.

      Website A caters to a younger crowd. It reviews Bar X and calls is rotten.

      Website B caters to an older crowd. It reviews Bar X and calls it lovely.

      Yes, Bar X may have been older-friendly already, but if the site(s) are popular enough, this orientation will, as a result of the website reviews, gradually become more acute.

      The same occurs with preference engines, only even more egregiously; you don't read a bad review on your favorite site, the business, location, party, or event never even appears on your favorite site, and thus you and anyone like you never knows about them, never attends them. Your social circle loses any participation in, or marketplace influence on, said business, location, party, or event. And as a result, it offers less and less for your "sort," since your "sort" never turns up. Eventually it loses sight of your "sort" altogether.

      In effect, you are segregated from it (or it from you). Repeat for every population living in a given urban space and you have populations that simultaneously occupy the same city but lead completely separate, distinct, and radically different lives.

      And, as a corollary, the diversity of each of them is drastically reduced.
      • Yes, but the segregation is voluntary and easily avoidable. IMHO It's sociopathic to "decide where to shop, where to play, where to drink, and where to stay at least in part (if not entirely) based on websites and website review."

        Moreover, IMHO, more diversity is not inherently good nor is less of it inherently bad.
        • Moreover, IMHO, more diversity is not inherently good nor is less of it inherently bad.

          I agree. However, don't try to say that in a modern university or college setting, you racist, sexist, Eurocentric, homophobic, phallocentric pig.

          You probably weren't even aware that you were racist, sexist, Eurocentric, homophobic, or phallocentered, but that's what you'd be labeled. The idea that diversity, by itself and without anything attached, is inherently a Good Thing is a key tenet of modern liberal (in the 'libe
          • We're sliding OT, but I just wanted to agree, and say that I know all that -- it was notable present and annoying (though not as strongly ingrained as it is now) even when I was in college 8 years ago. I wonder if the GPP is so absorbed by this ubiquitous faulty assumption that he doesn't even realize it, or if his corollary was just an observation and not a value judgement as I suspect. It's hard to tell.

            But it is a frustrating meme, tightly associated with other nuisances such as the Cult of Self Est
          • Not at the universities I attended. They encouraged a critical examination of all perspectives, employing any number of theoretical approaches.

            Sounds like you got a second-rate product. Sorry to hear it.
          • Moreover, IMHO, more diversity is not inherently good nor is less of it inherently bad.

            I agree. However, don't try to say that in a modern university or college setting, you racist, sexist, Eurocentric, homophobic, phallocentric pig.

            I think you're building a strawman here. Liberals don't encourage people to diversify, they encourage acceptance of diversity. i.e. Liberalism discourages the enforcement of conformity. Individual liberals may fail at this. But then, individual Christians sometimes get a divorce
        • Granted, it's voluntary right now, but it's only going to get more pervasive as computing and the web become the primary medium of more and more of our culture. We've got web pages already, and with podcasts and RSS/bittorrent it's starting to take over radio, too. I already know people who don't watch any TV or go to the cinema, but download films and programs and watch them on their PCs. I know even more people who don't buy newspapers, but instead browse the BBC, CNN and/or Al Jazeera.

          It's also intere

          • Re:Is this for real? (Score:3, Insightful)

            by xappax ( 876447 )
            I already know people who don't watch any TV or go to the cinema, but download films and programs and watch them on their PCs. I know even more people who don't buy newspapers, but instead browse the BBC, CNN and/or Al Jazeera.

            I know people like that too. In fact, I am one of those people, but the interesting thing is that almost all the people I know who get their media/information exclusively from the internet are wealthy, educated and/or college students.

            If I asked most of the working class, "regul

      • Are you for real? (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        "Most people I know these days decide where to shop, where to play, where to drink, and where to stay at least in part (if not entirely) based on websites and website reviews."

        Man, you need to meet new people.

        "Hey, buddies, let's go out for a burger!"

        "Where to?"

        "Hold on, let's check burgers.com and see what's the pick-of-the-week."

      • Not that simple (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Moraelin ( 679338 )
        You seem to assume (but maybe I'm just mis-reading it) that being forced into some uninformed unfiltered choices of social groups will result in more diversity. I'd say, on the contrary, it reduces diversity on the whole.

        See, if you did go (alone) to Bar X and tried to fit in and have some "shared experience", the result isn't that there'd just be some people (older or not) who could use some more diversity. Chances are there'd be a clique of regulars who already have One True Way (TM) of seeing the world.
    • and at the same time now more than ever people interact over class barriers in ways they could never do before, a modern day "peasant" can walk into a shop and get the same service as a snob or save a little and go to an overseas holiday and ride the same airplane his boss does.

      besides, gays go to gay bars and heavy metal fans to heavy metal bars! football fans all watch football with other fans! OH NO SOCIETY COLLAPSING!

  • Well... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Musteval ( 817324 ) on Wednesday September 21, 2005 @09:02PM (#13618529)
    In my opinion, at least at present, this is not the case - the opposite is true. Whereas normally upon hearing about, say, the newest Harry Potter book from a friend, you would only check out that one book and maybe the rest of the series, you can now find a huge range of similar novels (most of which suck). Your tastes are widened (as you don't lose interest in old tastes) and significantly deepened (duh).

    • Re:Well... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by randyest ( 589159 ) on Wednesday September 21, 2005 @10:11PM (#13618836) Homepage
      I share your opinion. In fact, I've heard similar complaints about the slashdot friend/foe system and the ability to "moderate" (affect the score) of messages posted by your friends and foes. Some claim this is just a way "to avoid reading alternative viewpoints."

      But in my experience, it's a good way to avoid reading over and over again the same stupid shit that I've given ample consideration to and rejected as stupid shit. I don't have time to keep re-considering it every time someone posts it. Being able to avoid that is a Good Thing.

      I guess it's possible that one of the morons I've chosen to ignore would suddenly one day, 1000-monkeys-on-1000-typewriters style, present some cogent insightful bit of info to make me reconsider my already-carefully-considered viewpoint. But, I'm pretty sure I'd run into that novel info eventually anyway, and the ability to avoid it (or at least focus on the new info from those who have already proven themselves to be less moronic) is valuable to me.

      Same with amazon's "people who bought that also like this . . " and other preference engines. They're preferences for a reason.

      • Sorry, (Score:2, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward
        "I guess it's possible that one of the morons I've chosen to ignore would suddenly one day, 1000-monkeys-on-1000-typewriters style, present some cogent insightful bit of info to make me reconsider my already-carefully-considered viewpoint."

        Looks like today isn't your day.

  • Very True (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Agent_9191 ( 812909 ) <kopelli@gm[ ].com ['ail' in gap]> on Wednesday September 21, 2005 @09:04PM (#13618534)
    This is a very valid point. As people start to only interact with similar minds online, they will confront a sort of system shock when they have to deal with people who have a radically different view on life in real life. It would probably take a few generations for this effect to happen though...

    • Already happened. (Score:3, Insightful)

      by headkase ( 533448 )
      With the industrial revolution the urban population exploded - in only a short generation and a war or two, society had transformed from an agrarian rural lifestyle to urban industrial specialists. Machinery was the enabler, when one person could produce an amount of food that it previously took maybe a hundred people to produce then it provided the ability for a small machine-augmented rural population to feed larger city populations. Now in North America urban population far outweighs the rural populati
      • And the automobile and auto-suburbs which began growing post WWII created another dramatic shift. People who moved out of the city into suburbs became dependant on automobiles for all of their needs - shopping, work, visiting friends, etc. The stores that these people began to shop at more and more provided massive amounts of parking - the downtown shops were far less convenient and suffered because of it. Now we live in a society where most people rarely eat, shop, or do much of anything someplace that

  • Doomsayers R Us (Score:5, Insightful)

    by aussie_a ( 778472 ) on Wednesday September 21, 2005 @09:08PM (#13618556) Journal
    There's a danger that if we don't have some level of shared interaction, it can be destructive to our social cohesion.

    Sure, and we can all die tomorrow. But that doesn't mean it is likely to happen.

    Way back when, people would live in small villages and were limited to interaction with those in the village (and those travellers who happened to be passing through). Small communities tend to result in people having the same opinion on most things. Society was able to survive in this mode for quite a long time. It's only been recently that the idea of exposing yourself to differing opinions and seeing other people's side of things has gained wide-acceptance.

    The internet encouraging people to only interact with those who share their opinion will not be the end of society as we know it.
    • Bah the corporations know how to poison this well. Go to any kind of a rating site and you will see that over 90% of comments are positive. Why? Well It could be that people would be embarrased to tell everybody they just spent money on a piece of junk of course but more likely it's that the manufacturer is astro turfing. It's very easy for a company to pay somebody to work part time setting up user names and saying how great their product or service is.

    • Re:Doomsayers R Us (Score:3, Interesting)

      by garcia ( 6573 )
      Society was able to survive in this mode for quite a long time. It's only been recently that the idea of exposing yourself to differing opinions and seeing other people's side of things has gained wide-acceptance.

      Nah, it's still the same as it always was. The availability for differing opinions does exist but people tend to stick to their belief system. People feel comfortable congregating (online or in person) with others that share similar beliefs (duh).

      You think that because there is "proof" Intellige
      • The availability for differing opinions does exist but people tend to stick to their belief system. People feel comfortable congregating (online or in person) with others that share similar beliefs.
        You're so wrong! Why do you hang out on slashdot?
    • It's the same in large cities. There is a divide between urbandom and ruraldom that is as old as the Roman Empire. The closer you get to the center of a large metropolis the more you will find people leaning to the left, while the further away you get from the city the more you will find people leaning to the right.
    • Also, it's untrue that people only interact with those they agree with. There are always points of contact - example: libertarians and lefties beating each other up on /.

      Plus, there are major advantages to hanging out with those who share most of your views. Such as: you get to talk about expert level stuff. I'm sure that, for example, evolutionary biologists would prefer to chat about the genetic implications of the latest dinosaur find in China, than be continually swatting down ill-argued crap from god-b

  • Moderation system (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 21, 2005 @09:08PM (#13618560)
    In a way, Slashdot is a pioneer in this area. Posts which are unacceptable to the mainstream are moderated down, effectively "disappearing" them to most viewers.

    What the preference engine does is to tailor this to the individual viewer. Thus groupthink can operate at very refined levels. Provided that there is sufficient clustering of opinions, isolated communities-of-opinion form.

    Indeed, even if the clustering of opinion is slight, over the long term it may be reinforced by the effects of the preference engine, thus causing a sort of condensation of parochialism.

    Of course, the same thing can happen in meatspace. But there it takes longer, and there always the uncomfortable chance that you may happen by chance to talk to someone outside your community (a homeless person, a Bush voter, an atheist, etc.), and your assumptions could be challenged.

    Whereas online, it seems that these isolated communities are ever more cohesive, and venture into foreign territory only to engage in virtual pogroms. (E.g., in the context of political weblogs, the occasional 'invasions' of redstate.org by partisans from dailykos.com)

    • Re:Moderation system (Score:4, Funny)

      by Clover_Kicker ( 20761 ) <clover_kicker@yahoo.com> on Wednesday September 21, 2005 @10:04PM (#13618809)
      > In a way, Slashdot is a pioneer in this area. Posts which are
      > unacceptable to the mainstream are moderated down, effectively
      > "disappearing" them to most viewers.

      > What the preference engine does is to tailor this to the individual
      > viewer. Thus groupthink can operate at very refined levels. Provided
      > that there is sufficient clustering of opinions, isolated
      > communities-of-opinion form.

      Golly, that doesn't sound anything like Usenet killfiles 15 years ago.
      • As a big fan of the old PLONK or WTMKF (the sound of a new entry in a kill filter, often used as a derisive reply, which BTW still exists and isn't limited to 15 years ago) I must also admit that KF's are primitive compared to the slashdot +/- 1-5 system that allows a more refined pro-/demotion of specific users and/or moderations (I love +6 on flamebait, -6 on funny, and +3 on trolls, reading at +3 -- but hey, that's just my preference!)

    • Re:Moderation system (Score:5, Interesting)

      by moviepig.com ( 745183 ) on Wednesday September 21, 2005 @10:11PM (#13618832)
      ...online, it seems that these isolated communities are ever more cohesive...

      With (ahem) a little preference-engine background myself, let me note that, except for extreme instances, /.'s moderation seems not at all "cohesion"-prone. This is because its critique is primarily positive, and usually about eloquence as much as content. I.e., an upward mod demands merely that you say something engaging and coherent. If you do, chances are fair that you'll ring someone's chimes. And, in turn, you'll read comments thus chosen, if only to see what caught someone else's fancy. It's hardly the same as a selective, self-reinforcing community... and may even have the unintended side-effect of expanding perspectives...

      • I.e., we're all nerds, we all like to think that the world is about eloquently building an ivory tower and having something _logical_ (if only by virtue of using enough fallacies) to say about anything. We're the kids who got praised (if only by our parents) when we could rant for hours about how the rainbow is like that because of refraction and difraction on water droplets, instead of saying some platitude like "dunno what it is, but it's as beautiful as your eyes". We're the ones who when asked something
    • Posts which are unacceptable to the mainstream are moderated down, effectively "disappearing" them to most viewers.

      Right, AC, like you have any right to complain about this.

  • Slashdot (Score:3, Insightful)

    by RAMMS+EIN ( 578166 ) on Wednesday September 21, 2005 @09:09PM (#13618565) Homepage Journal
    Is this at all like Slashdot-manufactured consensus? Where we mod up anti-Microsoft, anti-patent, anti-**AA, anti-SCO, pro-F/OSS, pro-Apple, and "Linux is difficult" posts, and mod down anti-Java and anti-USA posts?
    • Which slashdot are you talking about? Not this one. In this one the highest rated comments are of the variety "I like open source but linux isn't ready for your grandma" and "open source zealots should realize you have to use the right tool for right job" variety of astro turfing and shilling. Well that and all the "slashdot is teh sux" posts like yours.

      If you really want single minded kool aid drinkers you sould hang out at gotdotnet. There not only are you shouted down and berated if you say anything anti
      • ``In this one the highest rated comments are of the variety "I like open source but linux isn't ready for your grandma" ...''

        That falls in both the pro-F/OSS and the "Linux is hard" categories. I also think Linux is _especially_ for grandma, because she won't be playing games (the one thing Linux does lack), and she won't want to deal with the hardships of keeping a Windows or OS X system up to date and cleaning off the spyware. See also Linux Superstitions Exposed [nyud.net] before you throw the Linux is hard crap at
        • "hat's right. Having said that, I haven't seen that kind of comment for a while. "

          The point of a comment like "open source zealots should...." is to call people who use linux zealots. It serves no purpose other then that. The astro turfers simply want to associate open source users, programmers and advocates as dangerous zealots who one day may flip out and plant a bomb in your office.

          This simple tactic has worked wonderfully at slashdot. When a shill calls people who use linux zealots nobody even questions
          • The point of a comment like "open source zealots should...." is to call people who use linux zealots. It serves no purpose other then that. The astro turfers

            Oh the irony is astounding. let me guess, you only want equal rights for people like yourself?
      • If you really want single minded kool aid drinkers you sould hang out at gotdotnet. There not only are you shouted down and berated if you say anything anti MS, pro java or pro open source they even delete your posts. That's one of a cult they have going there.

        Well, uhhh, it's a site devoted to .NET. Is it really surprising that they get rid of off-topic conversations? I don't see a problem with it. If someone wants to debate whether .NET is good, Java is good, open source is good, they have a thousand site
    • While Slashdot does suffer from a great deal of groupthink, the moderation system still lets through a significant number of dissenters. Perhaps not as many dissenters as it should allow, but the dissenters are not shut out.

      In Linux stories you will often see that incoherent pro-Linux comments will be left unmoderated or even moderated up while incoherent anti-Linux comments are modded down. However, the system (barely) works because most coherent posts that weren't copied from someplace else (usually) get
      • However, the system (barely) works because most coherent posts that weren't copied from someplace else (usually) get modded up regardless of whether or not they support the standard Slashdot position.

        Yes; as I see it, people who follow the "party line" are given the benefit of the doubt, whereas people who oppose it are judged more critically -- but by and large well-written posts get modded fairly.

        One common occurance is that if you insert random gratuitous flamebait into an otherwise intelligent post (an
    • Is this at all like Slashdot-manufactured consensus? Where we mod up anti-Microsoft, anti-patent, anti-**AA, anti-SCO, pro-F/OSS, pro-Apple, and "Linux is difficult" posts, and mod down anti-Java and anti-USA posts?

      To me the miracle is that the anonymous exchange of ideas breeds so much consensus, trolls and all. We certainly don't get that kind of cooperation when we face each other IRL.

  • And Geffen Looks to Buy the LA Times... (Score:4, Informative)

    by Baldrson ( 78598 ) * on Wednesday September 21, 2005 @09:11PM (#13618577) Homepage Journal
    Geffen is looking to buy the LA Times [latimes.com] which would explain why it is that the LA Times is running a story that totally ignores the degree to which mass media companies already "tell you what you like" and furthermore, tell you that you like what they like.

    Talk about narrow tastes!

    • From TFA "As consumers are exposed only to the types of things they're interested in, there's a danger that their tastes can narrow and that society may balkanize into groups with obscure interests."

      I'd rather be exposed to the types of stuff other people like me are interested in than only be exposed to the stuff some big company wants me to be interested in. The result of course is lots of smaller markets. A company that wants to survive will have to deal with a wider range of products with not very man

  • "There's a danger that if we don't have some level of shared interaction, it can be destructive to our social cohesion."

    No, that's not "danger", it's prospect.

    It is a very good thing to keep away from me, if someone annoys me, and I will do the same for those whom I annoy.

  • Listening to other people's PVviews is good, but.. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by aussie_a ( 778472 ) on Wednesday September 21, 2005 @09:16PM (#13618599) Journal
    Listening to other people's point of view is all well and good. But no-one should feel like they have to listen to the hatred and bile that are chick tracts. [chick.com] And while that takes things to an extreme, that disregard for other people's opinions and that propaganda is extremely common on the internet. Just stay here at slashdot for a while.

    Having said that, I have managed to find a message board with mixed people, and they are fairly nice and keep the propaganda to a minimum. But these places on the internet are rare and few. I don't blame people for wanting to avoid people like Chick. Why are people so much more extreme on the internet? Well they're extreme in real life, but Penny arcade made a good point with a comic that said "Anonymity + opinion = fuckwad." People who might be nice and able to take differing opinions in real life, don't NEED to do so on the internet because they don't care about the people they interact with. They act nice in real life, because they care about people's opinions who they interact with. On the internet, this is no longer the case. They can act one way on one message board, another way on another message board, and no-one will ever know.
  • I think on average the answer is yes we are but so many things are in the equation for judging what makes someone chose A. over B. and if we find we allow ourselves to be approached with items that meet a formula built on estimation then we are likely selling ourselves short. Issac Asimov spoke to this in the Foundation series when speaking of Psychohistory and the ability to predict humans actions in large groups. It is evident to me that there is a great deal of truth in this for large groups of people b

  • Bump into people by chance? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by OpenGLFan ( 56206 ) on Wednesday September 21, 2005 @09:21PM (#13618620) Homepage
    Not as often as I used to. In the morning I see other people on the campus shuttle, as I fire up my Nintendo DS/PSP/GP2X handheld. The bus ride ends, but I've gotten good at switching my headphones to my MP3 player for the walk to class. Should I ask the cute girl in front of me to borrow her notes from yesterday? Nah, the slides from yesterday are on the professor's webpage.

    Class is over, so I plug my headphones in again and head for some lunch. There's a really nice sit-down Thai restaurant, but I've got a paper due, so I'll just jump into the line at the fast-food shop; food in under three minutes, what could be better? Fed and caffinated, I mp3 my way back to my next class. Occasionally my other class has really good class discussions, but this prof just powerpoints an hour and a half of my life away. My doodling's improved, though.

    That's all of my classes today! I thought about seeing if some of the guys in this class wanted to study for the test on Monday, but my guild has a raid planned for tonight, so I'm headed back to the bus.
    -----
    That's not me. That is, however, what I see of some of the undergrads here, a bit exaggerated, but still relatively accurate. My point is that if you're interested in vilifying technology, blaming online retail for a lack of social interaction in modern youth and young adults is like blaming Joe's Taco Stand in Tuscaloosa, AL for the rise in methane's contribution to the global greenhouse effect.
  • I think online retail is a pretty stupid thing to be worried about bringing an end to social interaction. A healthy adult interacts with people in many cases besides buying stuff at stores. Teenagers don't hang out at the mall to buy stuff, they hang out there to be with their friends. Sure, a few people might start purchasing everything from the internet and never leave their house, but the world would be boring without at least a few weirdos.

    Beyond commerce, you can make a bit of a better argument. For ex

  • Look at it like any other advertising (Score:3, Insightful)

    by jsprat ( 442568 ) on Wednesday September 21, 2005 @09:28PM (#13618652)
    Rather than thinking about word of mouth versus preference engines, think about it as preference engines vs any type of advertising.

    Preference engines are just a way of introducing a product to a person. Traditional advertising does it by targeting demographics that they think the product will appeal to. A preference engine is an expert system that correlates other people's tastes and your's, and then can recommend something you will probably like. Sounds to me like more product will get sold, and the customer will be more likely to walk away with music they will enjoy. Everybody's happy.

    Given a choice between "one-size fits all" mass media where everyone sees the same ad and this, I'd much rather have semi-intelligent software point me to a song that I might like.

    BTW, Amazon does this too, and in my experience they are right more than they are wrong about my tastes.
    • This is something I miss about Napster. I tried it out before it died the first time, to see what all the fuss was about. The coolest thing was looking for a song I knew I liked, and then finding new things to like in the collections of people who had that song. The record industry will never know it, but some of us actually ended up buying music that we wouldn't have discovered without Napster.

      But somehow the Amazon recommendations don't quite hit the mark for me, and half the time they just seem to pus
  • I don't want to sound like the cold-hearted typical hardliner or something, but this is simply not true. When I use some sort of online recommendation system (for example Amazon's recommendations or things like Music Map [music-map.com]), I am not trying to shelter myself from everyone else in the world, I am just trying to explore some area of interest of mine further. And one way to explore these areas is to see what areas other people in the same area (same part of the music map, for example) are checking out.

    I pref
  • This study assumes that everyone who is a member of a given narrow interest group is also a member of the same set of other groups. A Republican who is Jewish, gay, an educator, and interested in gardening (yes, I actually do know someone who fits this description) would be a member of a rather diverse set of groups. Or, on Amazon, a given person might enjoy books on renaissance Europe, enterprise software, global travel, and women's issues (another friend). And I, who like technology and frequent /., kn
    • Actually, if you really want to drive Amazon's preference engine mad, just let several people with wildly different tastes use the same account. Or buy some Christmas gifts for friends while you're also buying books for yourself. You get some strange recommendations from then on.

      This really can't be blamed on the preference engine though, since it's just a form of the old Garbage In, Garbage Out principle. The preference engine is mostly filled with data from single-consumer accounts. If you then go and cre
  • You mean it would be better to continue letting companies/pyschopaths/sociopaths/marketing steer my wants and needs, socialize me, and monopolize my communications (mostly one-way) vs. a bunch of hand-selected people and ideas I wish to congregate with?

    I welcome the day my group (whatever group) of people create a mini-Utopia, at least for themselves, *ignoring* those who want to dominate and exploit.

    Let the designer mini-society begin, and let the best win.

  • If we communicate with only those people we shop like, of course it creates a feedback loop that not only alienates us from a diverse group of people, it also has us all wearing big buckles on our hats and shoes, or polyester leisure suits. That's why people like to ramble. Our social groups should include shopping preference engines. Not just shopping engines with sterile corporate chatrooms.

  • Slashdot is itself a good example of this (Score:3, Insightful)

    by mcrbids ( 148650 ) on Wednesday September 21, 2005 @09:51PM (#13618757) Journal
    The slashdot community has a certain group-think to it, exemplified by my recent post [slashdot.org].

    An article was posted where the headline had little to do with the article. There was post after post of based on an erroneous headline. I pointed this out, and got modded flamebait.

    I'm not upset by this; I knew pretty much that's what would happen going in. But, it's an example of a preference engine (the moderation system on Slashdot) acting to squelch any ideas that don't conform to the group-think so prevalent here.

    Thus, you say what slashbots think you should say, and you get modded up. Question them, or provide meaningful data in opposition to any of the core mantras around here, and your voice is quickly trampled in mods of "flamebait" and "off topic", or perhaps "overrated" to avoid any karma consequences in metamoderation.

    Microsoft=bad. Linux=perfection. Sun=irrelevant. Everybody here's a single male between 14 and 35, living in momma's cellar. ??? profit!

    These are all Slashdot mantras, ideas so firmly entrenched into the moderation culture that to really oppose these ideas means moderation oblivion and a loss of karma. (voice)

    It's entertaining, and as a Linux user, I mostly fit in, but it's definitely an ideological monoculture. Sometimes, I just get pissed. (and modded to the wasteland that is -1)

    PS: I have some mod points now, and will be using them soon...
    • I browse at +3 with a +6 modifier to flamebait, troll, and underrated mods, and a -6 on informative, underrated, and insightful. You do know that you can modify your preferences [slashdot.org] and re-do any moderation anyway you like, right?

      What was your point again? Oh, yeah -- that moderation imposes unavoidable groupthink. I guess that's true for those who don't bother to alter preferences. But they are your preferences, after all, and you don't have to leave them at the defaults.

      P.S., I read your post again
    • No, the moderation system isn't the sort of preference system the article is describing. If they did have that sort of system, the Microsoft zealots would see all the pro-MS posts at +5 and the Linux crowd would (fail to) see them at -1. The two groups would share the same space, but be mostly unaware of each others' existence.

      What you're seeing is a different sort of selection, one done by individuals rather than by automation. Slashdot's fans tend to have certain biases, so those who share those biases
    • uh, hello... this got modded insightful, you've got mod points too... I wonder what you'll do with them? Will you mod up people who share your views of how /. is full of group thinkers? or will you use them to mod down people who exhibit blatant group think? Which group? The one you belong to, possibly a minority, possibly just a silent majority... in any case you've just provided evidence that you are not wholly correct and if I had any mod points I would mod this 'overrated' simply for that fact.

  • I am not defined by my purchases (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mollymoo ( 202721 ) on Wednesday September 21, 2005 @09:55PM (#13618769) Journal

    It seems to me that implicit in the article is the suggestion that we are defined by what we buy. That's absurd. What does it matter if I only listen to Techno and my neighbour only listens to Jazz? He still lives next door, we breathe the same air, drive on the same roads and have the same elected representatives. That's what creates social cohesion, not all listening to the only radio station in town and being brainwashed into buying Britney albums as a result.

    Even in the activities we have total choice over we are all members of a number of different groups. I'm a robotics geek, a physicist, a cricket fan, an electronica fan, a motorsports fan, and I fit in a dozen other categories too. Within each category recommendation engines work well enough. But through being a cricket fan I meet people who aren't robotics geeks and who aren't physicists and who don't like electronica. Through these people I get to hear about jazz and soccer and knitting and all the other things they don't have in common with me.

    If there's ever a a service which recommends every aspect of your life, from what to eat for breakfast to where to live and what job to have I might worry. Till then I can be pretty sure all the people I'll meet are multi-facted individuals and will have something new to teach me - even if our record collections are identical.

  • Are Preference Engines are truly unbiased?

    How would people feel if, in a theoretical universe just like our own, there was the liklihood that Preference Engines could be tweaked by donations from manufacturers and suppliers? To continue the music example from the article, "Like Coldplay? How about trying [some obscure music clogging-up our warehouses because we haven't been able to sell it, but we threw $10,000 at the Preference Engine vendor because it's cheaper than the cost of destruction]?"
  • Hey! I found this article through Slashdot and it mentions a book, "The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less", that sounds interesting, I think I'm going to <clickety-click> look it u...

    Or not? =8-0

  • randomize... *mumble* optimal brain damage algorithm... *snore* markov chaining on similarity matrices...

  • Social Interaction? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by bubbaD ( 182583 )
    What's social interaction?
    Television and TV commercials have already done this. Now ISPs are the middlemen now, but nothing else has changed. Certainly in suburban America, everyone seems increasingly isolated. I assume that's true elsewhere, but I don't know, 'cause I don't go anywhere anymore. (Note to mods: I'm dead serious)
    • It's true. Everything *is* increasingly isolated, and I think people like it that way.

      I can get most of my needs met from my computer, and if it wasn't for my wife (and takeout food!) I'd probably go days without interacting with another living soul. Which is fine by me.

      I think social interaction is highly overrated anyway. Have you ever realized that most people suck?
  • One thing that's being totally ignored is that there are many types of people, and some of them don't like hanging out with people like themselves.

    My friend Max loves to argue. He can't stand sticking around people who share his opinions for too long. (sound like anybody you know?)

    My friend Addie is really girly, but can't stand hanging out around too many girls, because she likes being the "most girly" one in the group.

    The point is that some people very much like diversity in their social circles.

  • Bah! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ReadParse ( 38517 ) <john@IIIfunnycow.com minus threevowels> on Wednesday September 21, 2005 @10:12PM (#13618839) Homepage
    Come on, some people could find something bad about anything. Preference engines, suggestive selling tools, whatever you want to call them. They're awesome. And it doesn't take away anybody's ability to see things that don't match their interests.... all the have to do is browse. I can go to Wikipedia [wikipedia.org], for example, and click "Random Page" or take a look at the home page, and get presented with something I never would have thought to look for. But the desire to do that doesn't mean that they shouldn't also have "See Also" links in the story I'm reading, with the assumption that my interest in one story suggests a potential interest in other stories.

    Poor, poor, 21st century consumers... surrounded by so much technology that we can't even go looking for new stuff anymore? Hogwash!

    RP
  • I use a single account for buying books and stuff from Amazon for my whole family.

    My daughther likes "Harry Potter", but hates "Narnia". She also likes Nintendo games.

    My wife is has an atheist's interest in theology and history of Christianity, plus she was a literature major, so she gets some serious lit books (like anonotated "Ulyses").

    My son got bunch of D&D books, plus some programming books on Flash. He also likes political humor (eg. John Stewart or Bill Mahr).

    I get some computer books, lo

    • Mine's not quite that crazy, but it's definitely diverse. I've bought an awful lot of off-the-wall books just because I've seen them mentioned here (or in other internet communities). Or I'll get it in my mind to read up on some event or topic so I'll order a few books.

      Things on my bookshelf at the moment, ordered from Amazon.

      - sci-fi / fantasy fiction
      - DVD movies from multiple genres
      - books on Vietnam
      - a few books on cult psychology
      - literary stuff
      - computer books (from O/S's to security to prog
  • I've noticed that those with a vested interest in old media (newspapers/tv) -- the opinion-making industry -- complain the most loudly and lucidly about online phenomena. This includes:

    * newspapers/TV vs. blogs
    * online books vs. dead-tree books
    * online, non-peer-reveiwed journals vs. old style journals
    * online movie reviews vs. what some newspaper/tv guy thinks.

    I've also noticed that often the charge is that internet leads to people forming their own echo chanmber, or other groups that believe the same thin
    • I see I've been modded "Troll," and not "flamebait." Oh well -- let's take this opportunity to add another liberal Jew to the list of folks saying that the internet is bad (because it threatents old media's hegemony): Cass Sunstein [uchicago.edu].

      This guy apparently wrote a book [amazon.com] saying that the internet is bad for democracy. Not "old media", with its deathgrip on American political thought -- the internet. Thanks Cassy!

      Oh, and thanks, dear moderator, for modding me "troll" and not flamebait. [and if you want, you ca
  • "In the physical world, I bump into all kinds of people by chance."

    But you don't talk to them.
  • Are you sure? Movie critics have not really thrown society over the cliff or dissolved the cohesion like a giant bottle of Billy May's newest wonder solvent. Many of us probably have a couple of movie or book critics we might pay particular attention to, and if they give a movie or book a good review, we'd be more likely to see the movie or buy the book...

    And then there's NPR, Top-40 & New Country radio stations. Lots of groupies with those, yet even in the stark commercial desert that is Clear Channel/
    • Well for me, i's not that Wal-Mart doesn't do high-end sales.

      It's that I think their competitive practice stink and that their company already has gotten too large. (Large companies wield too much power in a free market.)

      Therefore, I choose to shop anywhere *but* Wal-Mart.

      (I used to shop at Wal-Mart a lot. Until I started thinking about whether I preferred shopping at large stores or small businesses. Low prices aren't worth being treated like cattle in a store where you can never be recognized as
    • Are you sure? Movie critics have not really thrown society over the cliff or dissolved the cohesion like a giant bottle of Billy May's newest wonder solvent. Many of us probably have a couple of movie or book critics we might pay particular attention to, and if they give a movie or book a good review, we'd be more likely to see the movie or buy the book...

      But that is exactly the point. Increasingly we self select our way into groups that think the same as us, to the exclusion of those who don't.

      If you

  • A slow boil... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by penguin_strut ( 751980 ) on Thursday September 22, 2005 @01:04AM (#13619429)
    Well that's the real danger, isn't it? I've thought about this a lot myself lately, and the conslusions are pretty obvious. People have noted before, usually in reference to bizzarre sexual fetishes, that the internet can justify people's otherwise off-kilter personality quirks by allowing them to contact groups that support the same beliefs. That's an easy one, but it obviously doesn't stop there.

    Take, for instance, my ex-girlfriend (no really, take her! Ha.Yeah. Anyway...): she considered herself to be a huge environmental activist, and we were constantly arguing about the legitimacy of human behavior. She would, in essence, go to the library or online source, find a bunch of books by people who agreed with her opinions, read them, and use that as legitimacy of her thought process. Ya know, because a "Dr." prefix makes them right, automatically. There are plenty of intelligent people on all sides of most issues, and reading only the research by those who've come to the same conclusion of you is not only short-sighted - it's counter-productive to the learning process. The truth is almost always somewhere between the extremes of those who you agree with and those you don't.

    Being in a cynical period for my feelings about people in general, this self-applauding tendency worries me. In a recent class on governmental comparison, our teacher used a chart to refute the idea that computers would someday irrevocably separate people from one another. It was a study of Brits, who were asked (gotta love those self-reporting studies) whether they felt effective in and informed about their government. The study compared their feelings to internet usage, and found that people who used the internet for long periods of time felt more efficacy when it came to their control over national government. In my opinion, this is a fallicy. Sure, it's easy to be better-informed because of access to online news, both national and international, but when it comes to efficacy itself, I find it hard to believe that people in newsgroups are (necessarily) more politically active than those that aren't.

    Without going into the feelings of self-importance and pseudo-intellectualism that distant interaction allows people, my main fear is that so much energy is going into agreeing with one another that (this sounds Marxist, I know) the energy required to engage the government in a revolutionary sense may never build up! Will the anger and dissapointment ever reach critical mass when we're so busy applauding eachother's homogenous opinions? After all, in the case of environmentalism, how many oil tycoons are reading 'open letters to the industry?' Probably not a whole hulluva lot. So isn't that, in some sense, completely wasted energy? As another example, isn't the allowance of peaceful protest (which is a very important right, I agree) just a way to legitimize the current regime? When I see a group of teenagers playing guitar and bongo drums to get a political point across, I can't help but think that they're playing right into the WASP's hands. "There. You played yer guitar, you smoked yer reefer, now go home and feel like you can sleep easy because you've 'done something about it.'" In other words, I fear that small bursts of political energy may take away from the potency of what would, eventually, be a mass outcry.

    While I agree that the 'net is a perfect social vehicle, I also think that way too much time is spent patting eachother's backs and accumulating whuffie, under the impression that it's actually making a difference to anyone but ourselves. The people that we intend to sting with our barbs have no idea we exist. Why? Because they're all busy on their own forums, agreeing with one another.

    (By the way, I think that peaceful protest and the right to share and build upon one-another's opinions are very important things; I just also happen to think that we're too easy on ourselves and avoid exploring the benefits/costs of things that we've already made up our minds against because we don't get the same social/neurochemical kickback when people don't agree with us.)

    • "my main fear is that so much energy is going into agreeing with one another that (this sounds Marxist, I know) the energy required to engage the government in a revolutionary sense may never build up! Will the anger and dissapointment ever reach critical mass when we're so busy applauding eachother's homogenous opinions? After all, in the case of environmentalism, how many oil tycoons are reading 'open letters to the industry? Probably not a whole hulluva lot."

      Probably you're wrong. Sure there are these gr

  • The Daily Me (Score:2, Insightful)

    by speculatrix ( 678524 )
    This phenonema has been commented on for some time... the ability to customise your online TV, radio, newspaper etc in order to only hear news you'd like to hear.

    The idea is sold to us as a way to simplify our lives. The snag is it also helps disenfranchise sections of the population, and if abused allow gov'ts to control the flow of news by simply ensuring it gets marked as irrelevant. People could also then decide to never hear bad news, and could cause even greater polarisation in society between rich

  • How long before they sell out? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Secrity ( 742221 ) on Thursday September 22, 2005 @07:53AM (#13620319)
    From TFA: "there's a danger that their tastes can narrow and that society may balkanize into groups with obscure interests."

    Would this outcome be bad for society on a whole, or is it just bad for mass market manufacturers? I really doubt that this will be allowed to happen. How long before marketers start going to the sellers and giving them incentives to have their preference engines suggest specific products, brands, titles, artists, albums, etc.? This sort of marketing is already a common occurance in brick and mortar stores, the difference is that in brick and mortar stores, it is shelf position, displays, and salesperson spiffs that are sought rather than preference engine suggestions.
  • "Music discovery is very social," said Jon Herlocker, computer science professor at Oregon State University and co-founder of MusicStrands, which makes music recommendations by tracking what its subscribers do


    It sounds like an oxymoron when a computer science professor talks about something being 'very social'.
  • > it can be destructive to our social cohesion

    Oh, FSM/IPU help us when our society starts to lose its tightly-knit, loving structure that we enjoy every day, giving us peace, fairness, which also causes everyone to love everyone else. Thankfully that hasn't happened yet and we can all breathe a sigh of relief that we're all so happy... yeah... destructive to the nonexistent cohesion?

    Utter bullshit: I hate advertising, corporations, and all the other knee-jerk crap that I'm supposed to hate because I'm

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