Safebook
Facebook without the content
Browsing Facebook with Safebook Installed (click to enlarge)
Install
Click the appropriate button below to install on Chrome or Firefox. Works with the 2020 Facebook redesign.
Description
Given the harms that Facebook has wrought on mental health, privacy, and democracy, what would it take to make Facebook “safe?” Is it possible to defuse Facebook’s amplification of anxiety, division, and disinformation while still allowing users to post a status, leave a comment, or confirm a friend? With Safebook, the answer is yes! Safebook is Facebook without the content, a browser extension that hides all images, text, video, and audio on the site. Left behind are the empty containers that frame our everyday experience of social media, the boxes, columns, pop-ups and drop-downs that enable “likes,” comments, and shares. Yet despite this removal, Facebook remains usable: you can still post a status, scroll the news feed, “watch” a video, Wow a photo, or unfriend a colleague. With the content hidden, can you still find your way around Facebook? If so, what does this reveal about just how ingrained the site’s interface has become? And finally, is complete removal of all content the only way a social media network can be “safe?”
Screenshots
Facebook News Feed (2020 redesign) modified by Safebook
Facebook News Feed (2020 redesign) modified by Safebook (in dark mode)
Facebook News Feed modified by Safebook
Facebook status input box modified by Safebook
Facebook user profile modified by Safebook
Facebook video interface modified by Safebook
Facebook Messenger interface modified by Safebook
Exhibitions
- Future Present: Design in a Time of Urgency, Science Gallery Detroit, USA, 2020
- Athens Digital Arts Festival, Athens, Greece, 2020
- Undocumented events and object permanence, Noemata, Oslo, Norway, 2020
- Algorithmic Bias, Senne, Brussels, Belgium, 2020
- Redirect, Tiger Strikes Asteroid, Greenville, SC, USA, 2020
- IASIS, TILT Platform, Loutraki, Greece, 2019
- Self as Actor: Colonising Identity, NeMe Arts Center, Cyprus, 2019
- Perfect Users, The Wrong Biennale, 2019
- Networked Disruptions / FLEFF, Ithaca College, 2019
Press
Article about Safebook in Fast Company
- Washington Post: Maybe the only way to keep Facebook from harming us is to hide everything
- FastCoDesign: Safebook is Facebook, except totally, gloriously empty
- The Verge: We won’t find out if Mark Zuckerberg can fix Facebook by asking him
- Aftenposten [Norway]: Vil ha sosiale medier som ikke teller «retweets» og «likes»
- Frankfurter Allgemeine (FAZ) [Germany]: Warum Instagram die Likes versteckt
- Boing Boing: Safebook: Facebook without the content