The Metric Mindset: Social Life in Datafied Media Landscapes 105 where media users agreed to install the Demetricator for a number of days, and then account for their experiences in an inter- view.2 The Demetricator is a plug-in for web browsers such as Chrome, Firefox, etc., that, when toggled on, removes all metrics from Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or Tik-Tok. By having users install this on their computers, they are, as Grosser himself ex- plains his plug-in, invited ‘to try the system without numbers’ (GROSSER, 2014). Facebook has since 2020 changed their inter- face to prevent the Demetricator from working on the platform, but it still works for Instagram, Twitter and Tik-Tok. Facebook, however, is much more metricated than the other applications, which means that the consequence for removing the metrics is larger on this site compared to others. Comparing the user experiences between the plat- forms, one can indeed also see that the metrics fulfill different functions, depending on the affordances of the application and the user habits developed in relation to them. In the following part of this section, I will give some examples of user experi- ences, which reveal the functionality of metrics, and the ways in which they guide perceptions and, in the longer run, behaviour. In short, responding to the question: ‘how does a metric mind- set reveal in the reported experiences of everyday media users when sensitised to the metric functionality through the removal of metrics from social media interfaces?’ The interview sample is small – eight informants, who were trying the Demetricator and were then interviewed about their experience. Such a small sample does, of course, not allow for any sort of generalisations, but it can reveal if it is at all possible to see if metrics have an impact on mindsets and behaviour. Epistemologically, we were more interested in the spectrum of behaviour, and not the most common patterns of use. 2 The experiment was conducted together with a group of MA students in 2018 and has since been repeated with other groups of students. In this article, only quotes from the 2018 study will be used, and only in relation to the Facebook Demetricator, since these informants have consented to have the quotes used for publication purposes. The quotes are anonymized, and neither age nor gen- der is indicated, as this is of minor importance in this context. We have since made the same type of data collection with the Twitter and Instagram Demetri- cator. All extensions can be downloaded from Ben Grosser’s website bengrosser. com. The fuller methodology is accounted for in Bolin & Velkova (2020).
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