{"id":13161,"date":"2012-11-24T20:02:48","date_gmt":"2012-11-25T00:02:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/?p=13161"},"modified":"2012-11-25T03:27:59","modified_gmt":"2012-11-25T07:27:59","slug":"what-would-facebook-be-like-without-quantification","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/2012\/11\/24\/what-would-facebook-be-like-without-quantification\/","title":{"rendered":"What Would Facebook Be Like Without Quantification?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been meaning to write for a while now about Ben Grosser\u2019s (@bengrosser<\/a>) project the Facebook Demetricator<\/a>. If you haven\u2019t seen it yet, the Demetricator is a browser extension that removes all the overt quantification from your experience of Facebook. With Facebook Demetricator installed and toggled ON, it doesn\u2019t matter if 2, 20, or 20,000 people like your most recent status update (for example); when you view that status update, you see simply \u201cpeople like this.\u201d Visit someone\u2019s profile, and you see that they have \u201cFriends\u201d\u2014not \u201cFriends 450\u201d or \u201cFriends 4,500.\u201d \u201cView all 6 comments\u201d becomes \u201cView all comments,\u201d and \u201cn<\/em> hours ago\u201d becomes either \u201crecently\u201d or \u201ca while ago.<\/p>\n

Grosser explains<\/a> that,<\/p>\n

As a regular user of Facebook I continually find myself being enticed by its endless use of numbers. How many likes did my photos get today? What\u2019s my friend count? How much did people like my status? I focus on these quantifications, watching for the counts of responses rather than the responses themselves, or waiting for numbers of friend requests to appear rather than looking for meaningful connections. In other words, these numbers lead me to evaluate my participation within the system from a metricated viewpoint.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He further posits that \u201cthe site\u2019s relentless focus on quantity leads us to continually measure the value of our social connections within metric terms, and this metricated viewpoint may have consequences on how we act within the system.\u201d I\u2019d take this one step further, and argue that if Facebook\u2019s \u2018quantification fetish\u2019 influences how we act within the context of Facebook (and it probably does), then it also influences how we act outside<\/em> the context of Facebook. (Recall that social media has an affect on our experiences of being in the world even when we\u2019re not using it<\/a>, and even if we ourselves don\u2019t use it at all<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

The Facebook Demetricator additionally aims to highlight capitalism as a motivating force, both for Facebook users (in their constant quest for \u201cmore\u201d of anything with a number on it) and for Facebook itself. In an interview<\/a>, Grosser asks, \u201cWhat purpose does this enumeration serve for a system (and a corporation) that depends on its user\u2019s continued free labor to produce the information that fills its databases?\u201d Facebook is, of course, tracking pretty much everything everyone does on the site (as well as what people do off the site), but only some of that tracking is revealed to users. Grosser posits that Facebook designers choose to show metrics that spur users to spend more time on the site (through that \u2018craving for more\u2019), and don\u2019t bother to make visible metrics that might decrease user participation on the site. (Can you imagine what would happen if Facebook displayed how many minutes you\u2019d spent that month on Facebook?)<\/p>\n

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Demetricated!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As I commented<\/a> to Ernesto Ramirez (@e_ramirez<\/a>), who first told me about Facebook Demetricator, there\u2019s obviously a lot going on with visibility<\/em> in this project\u2014though by my read, there may be more going on there than Grosser intended. On the one hand, by erasing the visible artifacts of Facebook\u2019s quantification algorithms, the Demetricator can draw our attention to the ways those metrics motivate our behavior on the site (as well as our feelings about our interactions on the site); perhaps with continued use and additional reflection, Facebook Demetricator could also help to illuminate the ways those metrics (and other similar metrics) influence our behavior and feelings outside of Facebook. And I do particularly love the conversion of \u201c#n people like this\u201d to simply \u201cpeople like this,\u201d though even a month later, I\u2019m not entirely sure I can articulate why.<\/p>\n

There is, however, an inevitable bit of \u2018reveal and conceal\u2019 happening here. By concealing what Facebook chooses to reveal, Facebook Demetricator in turn reveals the concealed free labor capitalism that structures Facebook\u2019s design and shapes how we use the site. But by drawing our attention to the obviously<\/em> tracked and quantified elements of our experiences on Facebook, could Facebook Demetricator deflect our attention away from all the numbers, scores, and algorithms that structure our experiences of Facebook \u2018behind the scenes\u2019?<\/p>\n

Grosser has<\/a> acknowledged<\/a> that Facebook employs many more metrics than are ever visible to Facebook users, and Facebook Demetricator does not claim to eliminate the quantifying algorithms themselves from users\u2019 experiences on the site. Yet as Grosser states, \u201cadding a metric to a line in Facebook implies that the data goes deeper, that there\u2019s more to know than what you see.\u201d This is precisely why I wonder if, by concealing the most visible signs that Facebook is tracking our every move, Facebook Demetricator doesn\u2019t accidentally further conceal the fact that Facebook\u2019s metrics and algorithms not only shape what we see and who sees us[i]<\/a>, but also track our every move. The free labor we perform when we use Facebook goes beyond providing visible content that lures our friends back to the site to do likewise; we also provide and generate a wealth of invisible<\/em> content for Facebook\u2019s databases and for Facebook\u2019s third-party ad partners.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Facebook has *all kinds of data* we don’t see….<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

What I\u2019d really love to see\u2014though it would be virtually impossible to do without Facebook\u2019s cooperation, and somehow I don\u2019t think Facebook would be into it\u2014is a sequel to Facebook Demetricator called the Facebook Reciprometricator<\/a>. This fantasy browser extension would erase all the ordinarily visible metrics of Facebook (as does Facebook Demetricator), but would make visible a whole host of new metrics that are usually for Facebook\u2019s eyes only. I want little red numbers for, say, \u201cYou\u2019ve spent n<\/em> hours on Facebook this month,\u201d \u201cYou\u2019ve been placed in n<\/em> target demographic subgroups,\u201d and \u201cn<\/em> third party apps have received access to your profile through your friends.\u201d That Facebook wouldn\u2019t welcome this in the least seems to underscore Grosser\u2019s point: that perhaps Facebook metrics shape our feelings and behavior more than we realize.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Whitney Erin Boesel still vastly prefers Twitter to Facebook. You can follow her at @phenatypical<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Demetricator GIF and comparison image from http:\/\/bengrosser.com\/projects\/facebook-demetricator\/<\/a><\/em>
\n Facebook stalker image from http:\/\/weknowmemes.com\/2012\/06\/facebook-stalkers\/<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

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[i]<\/a> For a brief moment, you could get around some of this and access your raw, algorithm-free newsfeed<\/a>\u2014but far as I can tell, Facebook\u2019s already put a stop to that. Pity.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve been meaning to write for a while now about Ben Grosser\u2019s (@bengrosser) project the Facebook Demetricator. If you haven\u2019t seen it yet, the Demetricator is a browser extension that removes all the overt quantification from your experience of Facebook. With Facebook Demetricator installed and toggled ON, it doesn\u2019t matter if 2, 20, or 20,000 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1875,"featured_media":13163,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9967],"tags":[18606,18603,942,3078,18604,18607,8958,10125],"class_list":["post-13161","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-commentary","tag-algorithms","tag-demetricator","tag-facebook","tag-metrics","tag-quantification","tag-reveal-and-conceal","tag-tracking","tag-visibility"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/files\/2012\/11\/demetrication-in-action.gif","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13161","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1875"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13161"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13161\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13168,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13161\/revisions\/13168"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13163"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}