Ben Grosser created Facebook Demetricator, a tool that removes counts from Facebook, so that instead of displaying “14,836 people like this” your interface will simply say “people like this.”
I love the concept. I haven’t seen it in action myself, because of my use of a manually-implemented “DeFacebookizer” that, rather than enmeshing me in the most direct possible corporate system of social control and structure, leaves me with only the heterogeneous, diverse, and open communications from people on the World Wide Web. The Web is not a pure wonderland, though. These sorts of communications are, of course, also continually subject to statistical analysis and displays of counts – how many comments on a blog post, for instance. To intervene in the count-obsession of digital media, it makes sense to go to where it is most prominent.
Grosser discusses his deaugmentation of Facebook in an interview with Matthew Fuller.
One Reply to “Statistics Outta My Face”