----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
Thanks for the history, Ben.
I think your work has an incredible amount of reach given that you’ve been
featured in (relatively) conservative news outlets in addition to having widely
shown your work globally. I, like most artists I think, have to spend time
reflecting on what kind of impact their work is actually having more broadly.
It seems like you’re in a position where you’ve found a sweet spot in terms of
content vs. public digestibility. I mean that your work has a level of
complexity, both technically and conceptually, that could be alienating, yet
the way in which you deliver it in terms of its actual accessibility (Chrome
web store for instance as a plugin in the case of Facebook Demetricator), but
also aesthetically seems to give it a level of social permeability that is kind
of rare for tactical media (are we still able to use that term?). It’s
admirable, and I think incredibly rare to be able to produce such poignant but
simultaneously, at least on the surface level, understandable work.
As we start to wind down week one, I’m really interested in your perspective on
the future. As noted in the opening thoughts earlier this week, Margaret Atwood
doesn’t like it when the word “dystopia” is thrown around without a level of
criticality. As someone really invested, aware, and working in the discourse of
social media and its proliferation of policy and culture, are you hopeful at
all? Do you see potential in any emerging platforms to be less invasive like
Vero or even Discord?
--
Byron Rich
Assistant Professor of Art
Director of Art, Science & Innovation
Global Citizen Scholar Faculty Director
Affiliated Faculty - Integrative Informatics
Allegheny College
Doane Hall of Art, A204
Meadville, PA
(o) 814.332.3381
www.byronrich.com
Allegheny Lab for Innovation & Creativity
www.sites.allegheny.edu/alic/
Co-chair of Exhibitions & Events - New Media Caucus
www.newmediacaucus.org
Reference letters require three weeks of lead time.
From: Ben Grosser
Sent: Thursday, May 7, 2020 8:03 AM
To: empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
Subject: Re: [-empyre-] Introduction
Byron wrote: Do you ever worry that you’re doing the research of finding
conceptual holes for the corporations whose platform you are critiquing? I
mean, is there ever a concern that they use your work to actually close
loopholes, or more actively suppress the very real marginalizing effects their
platforms engender?
I don't worry much about this. I think this is because, while the corporations
have at times used my research to make (or really, more, to announce potential)
changes, the holes they might close by doing so would be—on balance—of benefit
to the user. Further, even if it wasn't, it's my role as an artist to critique
the platforms in ways that enable everyday users to see them differently. Doing
so risks alerting the companies to those same critiques.
I'll use my social media demetrication projects as illustration. Back in 2012,
when I first launched Facebook Demetricator, many thought hiding visible
metrics on the platform was a strange idea ("without like counts how would I
know what matters?" was a common refrain), or that Demetricator was meant for
those "unpopular" people whose metrics were so low they couldn't bear to face
them. Even so, Facebook developers tried it out and Silicon Valley talked about
it for a while. In 2014 I published a research article detailing the negative
effects of metrics that was covered in Silicon Valley and elsewhere. In the
summer of 2016 Facebook (which now also owns Instagram) came after me legally
to get my work kicked off the Chrome web store (I successfully fought back with
pro bono help from the EFF). In other words, even though Facebook knew about my
work, they weren't using it. Sometime after this, I built additional
Demetricators for Twitter and Instagram.
But then came the 2016 US Presidential and UK Brexit votes, and social media
corporations were all of the sudden facing significant scrutiny. Governments
investigated them for their roles in the dissemination of disinformation and
targeted advertising used to manipulate those elections. The public was up in
arms about Cambridge Analytica and the misuse of personal data. The world was
finding concern about the negative effects of social media on self-esteem,
anxiety, and well-being. And so, finally, in 2019 the corporations had an
amazing "original" idea: maybe we should hide some metrics! Jack Dorsey
(Twitter CEO) started talking about the visible follower count as producing
undesirable behavior. Facebook announced they would test hiding metrics. Adam
Mosseri (Instagram CEO) said hiding the like count (for others) would improve
user well-being and announced their first "tests" would commence. (If of
interest, the influence of Demetricator on the social media corporations was
the subject of a comprehensive article in OneZero)
To be clear, these CEO/corporate PR statements haven't led to much action yet.
Twitter hasn't hidden any metrics in their core product. Tests by Facebook
haven't been observed or talked about publicly since the announcement. And
while Instagram has garnered significant positive media attention for their
announcements, so far their actions have been limited to hiding only the like
count for certain users under specific conditions in a subset of countries (not
including the US). In other words, these tests have been small to non-existent
so far, so perhaps the influence is limited. But even if Instagram does move
forward and hide like counts in all countries for all users, it's still a
limited co-option of the idea of hiding metrics platform-wide. That said, I
hope they do it anyway as it would be interesting to see the results.
Loopholes closed in response to some of my other works might be less balanced
than Demetricator (I'm thinking about ScareMail potentially enabling the NSA to
further refine its surveillance algorithms, or Go Rando showing Facebook they
need to analyze a user's words in addition to user "reactions" if they want to
surveil user emotion). But even in these cases, the primary purpose of the
works is not to severely thwart these companies' activities (if I did that
they'd just use a pile of lawyers to shut me down instantly). It is instead to
enable regular users to develop their own critical lens on the platforms in a
way that not just alerts them to problems with the particular interface
component of concern, but also to the need to scrutinize whatever these
platforms want from us and to question why one feels compelled to give them
just that.
Ben
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