MIT's Eyebrowse Will Rank and Review Internet Sites, While Retaining Privacy

MIT has launched a new scheme whereby participating users can voluntarily share data on their website viewing habits, via the use of a Google Chrome extension and by signing up to an MIT website.

 The scheme, called Eyebrowse, began development in 2010 and has been in closed beta for the last 18 months.

 Cornell information science professor Mor Naaman says of the project: 

"Data has traditionally been used by anyone from corporations to the government...but the goal of this system is to make the data more useful for the individuals themselves, to give them more control, and to make it more useful to communities."

David Karger is a professor of electrical engineering at MIT, who initiated development of the system six years ago.

He says:

“Google has this interesting 50,000-foot view of the Internet, because they know all the clicks. Most people don’t. There are lots of interesting questions about social dynamics. 

What are Democrats reading? 

You can’t answer that question right now.
 

There are things that the population as a whole would be interested in knowing, and also things that scholars would be interested in knowing… 

The trackers don’t give us a choice about what gets tracked… 

And I’d really like to demonstrate that giving people a choice has positive benefits. 

And maybe someday that will turn into legislation that says that people have the right to decide whether they get tracked or not, in certain circumstances.”