Ben Grosser

Who they are

Grosser works at the intersection of software art and critical theory, building pieces that intervene directly in the interfaces people use rather than commenting on them from outside. Facebook Demetricator, released in 2012, is a browser extension that strips out the like counts, friend counts, share counts and comment counts across the Facebook interface, leaving everything else in place. It does not ask a user to resist checking a number. It removes the number. The intervention became the example other writers reach for when describing what a purely environmental fix to compulsive checking looks like; Adam Alter singles it out in Irresistible as the clearest case of what he calls behavioural architecture, changing the environment rather than asking for willpower.

Alongside the software, Grosser writes criticism. His most-cited essay, "What Do Metrics Want? How Quantification Prescribes Social Interaction on Facebook" (2014, Computational Culture), argues that the visible counters on a platform are not neutral feedback; they actively shape what kind of interaction the platform's design rewards. Grosser holds his position at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign's School of Art and Design and co-founded the Critical Technology Studies Lab there, work that keeps his software and his writing pointed at the same target: the metrics layer of social platforms, and what happens once it is made visible, or removed.

Works

Grosser has published no books. His output is software artworks and critical essays.

Facebook Demetricator (2012). Browser extension that hides all visible metrics, like counts, share counts, friend counts and comment counts, on Facebook.

Grosser, B. (2014). "What Do Metrics Want? How Quantification Prescribes Social Interaction on Facebook." Computational Culture, issue 4. His most-cited essay.

Key papers

Grosser, B. (2012). Facebook Demetricator [browser extension].

Grosser, B. (2014). "What Do Metrics Want? How Quantification Prescribes Social Interaction on Facebook." Computational Culture, issue 4.

Key ideas

The Demetricator is the most elegant intervention associated with behavioural architecture on this site precisely because it does not ask for willpower. It deletes the number a craving would otherwise organise around, rather than asking a user to notice the craving and talk themselves out of acting on it. The same logic closes the argument this site draws from wanting versus liking: if a metric is a wanting signal, engineered to pull a person back for another look, removing the metric leaves behind whatever the person actually enjoyed, uncontaminated by the pull to keep checking.

Concepts on this site

Behavioural architecture, the design principle the Demetricator is treated as the clearest working example of

Find them elsewhere

All accounts are linked from the about page of his own site, and the X account is also linked from his Illinois faculty profile

Checked 2026-09-10. Handles and affiliations go out of date, so treat this block as a snapshot rather than a standing fact.

---