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Hidden filters control what we see online, says Eli Pariser, board president of MoveOn.org

What is the 鈥溾�� you talk about?
Increasingly we don鈥檛 all see the same internet. We see stories and facts that make it through a membrane of personalised algorithms that surround us on Google, Facebook, Yahoo and many other sites. The filter bubble is the personal, unique universe of information that results and that we increasingly live in online.

You discovered the filter bubble when you noticed people were getting different results for the same Google search and Facebook friends with differing political views were phased out of your feed. Why is this harmful?
I take these Facebook dynamics pretty seriously simply because it鈥檚 a medium that 1 in 11 people now use. If at a mass level people don鈥檛 hear about ideas that are challenging or only hear about ideas that are likeable 鈥� as in, you can easily click the 鈥渓ike鈥� button on them 鈥� that has fairly significant consequences.

We have long relied on content filters, in the form of publications or TV channels we choose. How is the filter bubble different?
Yes we鈥檝e always used filters of some sort, but in this case we don鈥檛 know we are. We think of the internet as this place where we directly connect with information, but in fact there are these intermediaries, Facebook and Google, that are in the middle in just the same way that editors were. This is invisible; we don鈥檛 even see that a lot of the time there is filtering at work. It is hard to know what鈥檚 being edited out. And it is not like reading a magazine where readers are seeing the same set of articles. Your information environment could differ dramatically from that of your friends and colleagues.

You鈥檝e been called 鈥渁larmist鈥� and have been accused of overstating the effects of web personalisation. What鈥檚 your response?
There are two things. One is that I鈥檓 trying to describe a trend. I鈥檓 trying to make the case that it will continue unless we avert it. I鈥檓 not suggesting that it鈥檚 checkmate already.

Second, published in the peer-reviewed journal First Monday shows that the effects of personalisation on Google are quite significant: 64 per cent of results are different either in rank or simply different between the users they tested. That鈥檚 not a small difference.

You offer tips for bursting the filter bubble, such as deleting cookies and clearing browser history. More broadly, what kind of awareness are you hoping to promote?
I want people to know that the more you understand how these tools are actually working the more you can use them rather than having them use you. My other objective is to highlight the value of the personal data that we鈥檙e all giving to these companies and to call for more transparency and control when it comes to that data. We鈥檙e building a whole economy that is premised on the notion that these services are free, but they鈥檙e really not free. They convert directly into money for these companies, and that should be much more transparent.