Internet Bubble Tailored Sites

[Gobucks1234]

I was wondering if anyone else is frustrated with all the tailored sites on the internet?

They are quite annoying. I used to enjoy browsing the web but now it feels like the majority of results returned have been so whitewashed and tailored to my personality that they are uninteresting.

I mean my experience of yahoo's homepage is completely different ("and tailored") depending on what device I use. I noticed that if I switch between firefox or chrome, my experience is in no way the same. If I use my S4 to go to the site and compare it to mobile yahoo on my desktop, it's like two sites entirely, instead of one reformatted. I miss the day when yahoo was yahoo and what I experienced was what everyone else experienced.

There is a discussion going on about tapatalks new interface, some people hate it and others like it. I wonder if the people are even seeing the same thing. I bet fights are breaking out becuase two people think they are experiencing the same site/app, but in all reality they are completely different, busy arguing their side of the story.

Anyways, you think there is a way to stop this? What are your workarounds?

 

[zorak950]

As commercial entities that want your eyes on their services, web portals and search engines have an incentive to show you what they think you want to see. There's not much to be done about that. When it comes to things like current events, I recommend reading from a variety of sources: don't fall into the trap of only tuning in to opinions similar to your own.

 

[Javier P]

I'm not frustrated with this kind of sites just because I stopped using them a long time ago. They are what they are and the best thing is just to avoid them. They are not going to change their way to make money out of "tailoring" ads and so called information. Maybe they could change if most users just use another channels.

Organise yourself an heterogeneous collection of feeds with apps like Feedly, Flipboard or Newsstand and stop being a Yahoo (or whatever) customer.

One of the biggest dangers in the Web is just reading every day the same sort of news or interests. Every big company is going to try to push things that they think you'll agree with. That's the real Internet bubble for me.

 

[outlooker]

You might be able to solve this to some extent by switching to incognito mode when you don't want a tailored web experience

Posted via the Android Central App

 

[sting7k]

Anyways, you think there is a way to stop this? What are your workarounds?

Set all browsers on all your devices to private/incognito mode and do not track. Don't use aggregating websites like Yahoo. Go straight to the sources; the vast majority of content on Yahoo is not Yahoo produced. Those sites just pick the most sensational headlines anyway to get you to click and see more ads.

 

[Gobucks1234]

Thanks for the tips. I have tried disabling cookies which seems to help, but that's tricky, because they can be helpful for keeping settings and logging in on other sites. I have tried changing User Agent strings in the browser but it seems like Chrome/Firefox just ignore those. It seems like even if I turned off everything I could think of, the sites can still track me based on Hardware Serial #s and slowly begin altering site layout, content accordingly.

I agree totally about yahoo headlines/content, I was just using it as an example. I thought about getting a subscription to WSJ and my local paper. Not sure if those sites would also just end up filtering the content as well.