Bookmark: "Twitter Demetricator"

2019-01-14

Bookmarked:

Twitter Demetricator bengrosser.com

This is a neat project: Ben Grosser’s browser extension “Twitter Demetricator” strips the Twitter UI of all displayed metrics such as likes, retweets etc. to inspire reflection on how these numbers affect us as we use the site:

[…] what are the effects of these numbers on who we follow, what we post, or how we feel when we use the site? […] Demetricator lets us try out Twitter without the numbers, to see what happens when we can no longer judge ourselves and others in metric terms.

For sure more of an (artistic/experimental) statement than a practical plugin for the masses, I see Ben asking just the right questions:

With this work, I aim to disrupt our obsession with social media metrics, to reveal how they guide our behavior, and to ask who most benefits from a system that quantifies our public interactions online.

The blog post about the project has a lot more on those.

I'm Sebastian, Sociologist and Interaction Designer. This journal is mostly about bringing together social science and design for inclusive, privacy-focused, and sustainable "human-first" digital strategies. I also tend to a "digital garden" with carefully curated resources.

My monthly email newsletter has all of the above, and there are of course also an RSS feed and Twitter.

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