Why Collaborative Filtering Is Putting You In a Bubble

Popular websites and internet companies, like Amazon, Netflix and Facebook, use collaborative filtering to make recommendations to users about what they may be interested in. Collaborative filtering is what lets Amazon recommend other products, Netflix recommend new shows or movies, and how Facebook determines which posts you see in your News Feed.

What is Collaborative Filtering?

Collaborative filtering is using information from many users to make predictions about the behavior or preferences of a single user. The assumption that this system uses is that if one person agrees with someone else on one issue, then they are more likely to agree on other issues as well.

More generally, collaborative filtering is using collaboration among many data sources to find patterns or reach other conclusions. It can be applied to provide recommendations for other users, or your past behavior may indicate that you are more likely do something again. Each business must apply this filtering to their own business functions to find the most valuable insights and their applications.