The filter bubble: Is there one? How to work around it?

Few weeks ago I read the Eli Pariser's "What is the Internet hiding from you". Found it interesting in terms of conclusions about the net effect of the information hiding. The filtering and hiding creeps in almost everywhere these days. For-profit-data analysis is here to stay. The Web is no longer the neutral, naive, democratic, and connected medium from the 90 or the early 2000s. Yeah, we have Twitter and its importance will only grow. But Twitter is all that is.

Though Eli arrives at the conclusions looking at the problem from a different than Peer Belt's angle, the end state is what really matters. Peer Belt was created to offset the negative effect of the Search Engine Optimization (SEO), democratize the search results, and give quality content publishers (small and large) a shot at having their voice heard.

But what is the SEO, really? At times, it is cheating. But deeper, focusing on the SEO result, one realizes the SEO is yet another form of information hiding technique: yeah, we know there may be better content than ours, but try to find it; we are number one in your results and " we are fine in moderation" (thank you high fructose corn syrup ad! you rock!); waste no time and stick with us!

The solution to the information hiding problem is, well, obvious once one arrives there: (anonymously?!) sharing quality, Human-curated content within a peer group. With good and timely recommendations from the peers, it would not matter much if the big sites were ranking low or hiding publicly available content from our view. It will surface.

But how does one determine what content gets shared?

It is all based on a simple idea. However, considering the idea is part of the Peer Belt's secret sauce, this particular blog may not be right place to disclose all. You can still assemble bits from the Peer Belt's product site and by running the software. The thing to remember is, there exists a way out of the filtering bubble. It involves collaboration. Whether we follow it, truly depends on us all.