This is potentially the best news I have gotten all month.
"The Obama administration on Thursday will unveil a consumer privacy "bill of rights" that aims to give web users more control over how their personal information is collected and used online."
You can read the whole story at the Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
There is even a provision to protect consumers from being economically disadvantaged by would-be employers trolling the net for signs that perhaps you shouldn't be hired because you are:
Too liberal
Too Progressive
Too Conservative
Too Feminist
Too Ecologically Sensitive
Too OWs
Too Gay
Too Straight
Too Religious
Not Religious
Not Religious Enough
Wrong Church
or any other ridiculous individual trait that should have no bearing whatsoever on your ability to find a goddamn job.
My personal pet peeve--being the local go-to person for anything you are afraid to ask your doctor or pastor.
If Google and the Government were to look at my internet search habits, they would be horrified and mystified simultaneously.
How many watch-lists could I be on? Your guess is as good as mine.
Personally I would like to see Google [and other search engines] have to give up the claim of an optimal, intuitive search engine claim. The Filter Bubble just guides you to a corporate agenda and other paying customers. It doesn't necessarily take you where you want or need to go, or where you should be going for your information. And worse it often hides what you want to see.
They could claim electronic yellow pages, but to pretend that this somehow puts them on par with a [neutral] library card catalog is ridiculous. If I want intuition, I will call a psychic. But when I do a search, I want straight up results. I don't want to waste time trying to guess my way around hidden search algorithms that make no sense whatsoever in terms of serious research. The google filter bubble directly threatens Net Neutrality, and in my opinion is a form of censorship. But that's just me.
Your search results differ based on your origin/IP address. So when I do a search on Liberal or Progressive causes, are some of those results filtered out or moved lower on the results because I am searching from Oklahoma? This is but one of the questions I have asked but found no satisfactory answer for.
The announcement is good news, but only time will tell if it will be enforced. I am not holding my breath on that one.