Imagine creating a personalized internet that displays exactly what you want to view. It seems impossible with Google’s Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and other social media algorithms that are buying our attention. 

Due to Google’s SEO, content the user does not want to view appears on the first page of Google, leaving the information the user wants on the third or fourth page. This causes a misalignment between searched content and users’ interests.

“The kind of information that we consume informs our thoughts and behaviors,” Rachel Rosa, co-founder of Objective, explained. The team witnessed misalignment during the COVID-19 pandemic, which caused confusion for the best methods to handle it. 

Rosa stated her motivator to build Objective is “Ensuring access to quality information and control of information.” Objective’s browser extension personalizes your internet to put your priorities first, adding filters and contextualized data to combat manipulative or otherwise unwanted content.

Objective’s extension allows users to filter the search results through lenses by “using a sliding bar to adjust content in real-time,” explained Rosa. The first lenses the team are building are credibility and political bias lenses. This allows the user to control the credibility of the content appearing on the search result page and social media. 

There are many opportunities for the team to expand its offered lenses. “One of our biggest challenges is ensuring our solution doesn’t introduce our own biases. We are talking to academics in the space to ensure each lens is objective,” Rosa stated. 

What I Wish I had Known

“A simple problem becomes much more complex,” Rosa reflected when asked what she wished she knew before starting Objective. She went on to describe the team’s customer discovery realization that different demographics had vastly different pain points and lenses they would want.

Talking to their users provided lots of insights and an awareness that the solution could quickly become complex if the team tried to please everyone. 

Objective just launched its Alpha, register for it here.