Here’s a good article about some of the dangers of technologies that try to choose what content you’re going to see online.

The Danger Of Personalization: A Lesson From TED

Personalized content is a great thing, so long as you know that it’s been personalized, you know that what you’re looking at is an unrepresentative sample, and you have a way to free yourself from the bias of your own opinions.

I’m sure you’ve heard the old joke about the political liberal who couldn’t believe that Reagan had won, since “none of his friends voted for him.”

I heard something similar at the office lunch table. Somebody read a story claiming that on any given Sunday, X percent of the country goes to church. One of my co-workers said, “That can’t be. None of my friends go to church.”

There’s way too much information out there, and we need the ability to cull through it and find the stuff that’s relevant to us. But we also need to know when that’s happening. If search engines started showing us the results we’re likely to click on, we’d dig ourselves into a dangerous spiral of bias.

As far as web design is concerned, a box that says, “Based on your past choices, you might like these articles …” seems to cut the right balance. It’s nice to have content selected for me, but I need to know what’s going on.