After examining the negative aspects of Instagram, including its manipulative tactics, design features that encourage user retention, and its impact on us, I now want to shift focus to more positive aspects, specifically solutions to this problem. One notable solution is the introduction of the Hide-Likes function on Instagram in 2021. This small feature was implemented to mitigate some of the harm caused by the platform. Initially, I was surprised to discover that the idea behind this feature was actually conceived about a decade ago, and Instagram didn’t give credit to the creator. However, upon reflection, I wasn’t entirely surprised.
The individual behind this idea is Ben Grosser, an artist who examines the cultural, social, and political effects of software. He explores how interfaces that emphasize friend counts impact our understanding of friendship. He questions who benefits when a software system can intuit our emotions and how democracy and society are influenced when growth-oriented platforms become our primary window to the world. To investigate these questions, Grosser develops interactive experiences, machines, and systems that make the familiar unfamiliar, revealing how software dictates our behavior and alters our identity.
Since 2012, Ben Grosser has been studying how numerical metrics, such as the number of likes on a post or the number of friends and followers, shape our experience of using social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. He argues that these metrics have a more profound and insidious impact on our online behavior than we realize and that we would all be better off without them.
Grosser created a browser extension called the Facebook Demetricator, which removed all visible metrics from the site, in order to experience how the social network would feel without them. This project encompassed art, a social experiment, and academic research, and he never anticipated that he would still be maintaining and updating it seven years later.
Now, seven years later, in a significantly changed era for social media, the world’s largest tech companies have started experimenting with Grosser’s Demetrication. Twitter released a beta app that hides the number of likes, retweets, and replies on each tweet in reply threads, unless specifically tapped on. Instagram also recently announced an expansion of its test, which hides the number of likes and video views on every post in users’ feeds. While individuals can still see how many people liked their own posts, this change removes the ability to compare like counts between posts. Additionally, YouTube decided to replace real-time subscriber counts on channels with rounded estimates.
Grosser’s once-fringe and obscure ideas have gained traction over the years among technology critics and have received mainstream press coverage. The CEOs of Twitter and Instagram have articulated similar perspectives, acknowledging how prominently displaying like and follower counts can turn the platforms into a competitive space.
This case demonstrates how a technology critique ahead of its time can be disregarded for years, only to gain attention in Silicon Valley when circumstances change, and companies find it advantageous to adopt these views. However, it remains uncertain whether they have genuinely internalized these ideas.
These developments lead Grosser to question whether social media platforms are truly attempting to alter the dynamics of online interaction or if they are merely using demetrication as a public relations tactic. He suggests that these companies face pressure to take action and present solutions when facing inquiries from Congress regarding various aspects of their operations, from business models to their impact on democracy. He believes that these platforms may have chosen to hide one specific metric in order to claim that they are addressing the issue.
Ironically, platforms like Instagram and Twitter likely utilize metrics to assess the impact of hiding metrics themselves. Grosser expresses his curiosity regarding the precise criteria for success and failure in tests such as Instagram’s hiding of likes. He suspects that the company aims to ensure that these changes do not significantly hinder growth and engagement numbers.
