Could Personalized Search Ruin Your Life?
posted by Frank Pasquale
Imagine you’re applying for a job and want to be sure to give the right impression. A diligent self-googler, you think you know everything there is out there on the web about you. Nothing sticks out in the first 15 or so pages of results. But there is someone with name identical to yours who’s got a terrible reputation (or, to make this more concrete, just imagine your name is Tucker Max). And when HR does its background check on you, that’s the first result it sees. You’re never given a reason for being turned down for the job–just a brief form letter.
This scenario may result from what is otherwise one of the most promising trends on the web–personalized search. As you use a search engine more and more, it tends to translate your behavior into a database of usual intentions. That can make searches a lot more efficient for you as a searcher–but creates lots of uncertainty once you are the searched.
I worry a bit about a world where pervasive tailoring of search results means that few of us know what types of information others are receiving in response to particular search terms. What should we do about the resulting information asymmetries? I was surprised to find that there are over 600 papers on SSRN with the term “information asymmetry” in the title, and I’m sure some of these have valuable theoretical insights on the issue (which appears to be at the heart of important legal controversies like those arising out of Twombly). More practically speaking, Finland has set forth some practices for dealing with that eventuality, and I’ve suggested others (SSRN copy available here).
None of this is to dispute the obvious helfpulness of personalized search in daily life. For example, Google Co-op is a “platform which enables you to use your expertise to help other users find information.” According to the FAQs, “When you subscribe to someone in the Google Co-op directory, all of that provider’s labels and subscribed links will be added to your Google search results for relevant searches. The labels and links provide new and useful ways to refine your searches.” I think this is a welcome innovation at what I’ve previously described as a “Black Box” information source.
A new book by Samir Chopra and Scott Dexter helps explain the importance of such openness. As Chopra argues,
Software affects our expressive potential in two ways. First, it allows us
to express algorithmic ideas as programs written, typically, in high-level programming languages. . . . Second, as executing code, software constrains the ways in which we may interact with a computing device. The grammar of this language of interaction is the set of constraints that my software places on me — the structure within which I must operate if it is to understand me.
[W]e only modify our interactions with a computer if we can modify the code that it runs: the only solution to a frustrating interaction with an inflexible interface is to change the interface. But if the software running on a machine is unavailable for inspection and modification, the expressiveness of our language of interaction is severely restricted.
The problem, I suppose, is when one party’s freedom to find information gives it a manifestly unfair or harmful picture of another person or entity. Perhaps the concerns I have can be adequately addressed in employment law (ala the Finnish model). I nevertheless think that they have to be part of an overall “search engine law,” which reciprocally balances the benefits government gives to these entities with public responsibilities.
February 7, 2008 at 9:59 am
Posted in: Google & Search Engines
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Responses (9)
James Grimmelmann - February 7, 2008 at 10:42 am
Is personalized search ruining your life? Or is personalized search enabling a stupid HR department to ruin your life? I take the Finnish theory to be that HR departments will make bad decisions based on search data, so they should be prohibited from performing searches. That theory fits with the way we treat various protected classes in employment discrimination law; employers can’t even ask certain questions, on the theory that they can’t be trusted to use the answers responsibly. The virtue of non-personalized search is that it gives an indirect way to check up on the HR department’s informational inputs.
What about the following idea? Search engines should offer a “nonpersonalized” mode that anyone can always drop back to using. While HR could use personalized search to be more effective, they would be obliged to let anyone run searches personalized in the same way, for oversight purposes. (With individuals, this kind of idea raises privacy concerns, but I wouldn’t think that HR departments have the same kind of privacy interest in which searches they run.)
Logical Extremes - February 7, 2008 at 1:19 pm
Anyone concerned about this should have at least a couple of simple tools at their disposal to get around personalization/tracking:
1. log out of any personalization when performing critical searches;
2. check several search engines when performing critical searches;
3. a secondary browser set up to run clean every time (no cookies, history, caches, etc. saved).
These serve two purposes: they let you see what the world sees, and they (#1 and #3, at least) let you conduct some of your business a little more of-the-grid.
Frank - February 7, 2008 at 1:40 pm
To James: After I wrote this I thought “well, that was a pretty hyperbolic title.” But on the other hand, the whole thing I’m complaining about is the way in which new asymmetries of information can raise damaging possibilities about X without X ever being able to respond. So at least I’m broadcasting the concern to everyone, while the personalized search service seems to be “narrowcasting” it in a dangerous way.
But I do see the wisdom of framing this as a problem for employment law, rather than cyberlaw…after all, a P.I. could put together a damaging dossier as effectively as a search engine tailored to find the most embarrassing stuff about X.
To L.E.: Those are great self-help approaches. I have to wonder, though, if personalization may start working on the I.P. address level at some point. That would certainly be some valuable research to have. For example, I think I’ve done the “logout” you’ve mentioned, and still gotten ads for “New Jersey residents”. . . which are at least targeted to the location of the user, if not past search history.
Pete Aldous - February 7, 2008 at 6:24 pm
It seems like personalized search should make it more likely that potential employers would retrieve information about the correct person. Most job hunters apply for jobs close to home. They also tend to look in the same field as their previous jobs. Pages about them should reflect one or both of these specifics, while pages about other people with the same name are statistically less likely to contain these identifying characteristics. Because the employer’s personalized search profile should be calibrated to favor results from their geographical area and the same type of business as the potential employee, the potential employee should be higher in the employer’s personalized search rankings. Pages about other people with the same name should be lower, especially if the page discusses issues unrelated to employment.
A conscientious job hunter can direct a potential employer’s attention to his or her own page by putting a link on their resume. On their page they can directly address any “evil twin” issues, i.e. people with the same name but far worse reputations. It seems like this, coupled with libel suits to discourage outright lies about them, should be sufficient to protect most job hunters from this problem.
geoff - February 7, 2008 at 6:43 pm
What’s “manifestly unfair” here? Are you describing anything more than a difference in degree from the not-as-sexy, non-search world? Here, let me re-write your first paragraph:
Imagine you’re applying for a job and want to be sure to give the right impression. A diligent protector of your reputation (you always thought you’d run for office one day), you think you know everything there is out there about you. Nothing sticks out in your mind as something someone saw you do. But there is someone with a description identical to yours who’s got a terrible reputation. And when HR does its background check on you, it hears about “you” from some former colleagues of yours who are mistaken. You’re never given a reason for being turned down for the job–just a brief form letter.
I get it–online search might make this scenario more likely for more people. A difference of degree. There are also surely countervailing benefits. So what’s your point besides some abstract call for “more responsibility” (i.e., government regulation)?
Your Real News - February 8, 2008 at 8:23 am
But maybe Google will be in for more than just upsetting people with personal search if the defamation lawsuit goes ahead
http://therealnews.freehostia.com/wordpress/2008/02/08/defamation-class-action-against-google/
Barry - February 8, 2008 at 8:41 am
Well if a company relies on searching your name in google to get your background check, then they probably weren’t worth working for to begin with.
Logical Extremes - February 8, 2008 at 12:15 pm
Frank, I’d be all for more legal privacy protections, but for now all I have to rely on is self-help. Yes, many companies do at least geo-location using IP address. I’ve only encountered one site so far that I could detect that tracked me using IP address even after deleting cookies, but it’s bound to happen more. That’s why I change my IP address (and purge cookies) at least once a day.
The opposite/offensive approach, if you’re willing to put yourself “out there”, is to make a positive name for yourself on the web. Buy your name domain, keep upstanding public profiles, blog posts, comments, etc. Essentially market yourself to the world and make sure you’re uniquely identifiable and easy to find.
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