Good Listeners

visualizing the (forced) confessions obtained by divine web trackers

Google Chrome only (Firefox & IE versions coming soon)

Video & Screenshots

“GOD has the right, and my permission, to rearrange my life to achieve His purposes.”
—Google Analytics

About & Code

Good Listeners is a browser plugin that exposes the secret ways in which our browsing habits are shared with and mined by 3rd party web trackers (like Google Analytics and Facebook "Like") without our consent or knowledge. Whenever a site exposes the visitor's data to a third party service a confessional booth window is opened and the priest in the window offers words of invisible wisdom, divine providence and spiritual guidance pertaining to matters of web browsing, social networking, e-commerce and digital identity.

Good Listeners in a critical/amusing/awkward visualization and sonification of the vast data dimension passively generated by us and aggressively collected and mined by these mysterious omnipresent all-seeing tracking forces of the web.

Good Listeners does not block the tracking software, that would be blasphemy, the kind practiced by the devil's software.

We're Open Source

While the lord may be hidden from us his guidance and his code are as transparent and clear as the sunshine. Peak under the robes of our CrossRider powered browser extension and see whether the good priest is indeed holding a cross and it's not because he's just happy to see you. The code is released under the MIT open source license which means you are welcomed to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software.

As for our privacy policy, we do not collect or use your data in any way other than to serve & update the plugin and we are working hard to optimize it so that eventually no network calls will be made on its behalf.

If you run into issues you can report them here or better, if you write an improvement patch, we'd love to welcome you and your code into the lord's tent.

Fork us on Github

Credits & Inspiration

Concept & Design:: Mushon Zer-Aviv
Code:: Zohar Arad

Courtesy Mushon Zer Aviv, commissioned by the V&A with generous support from the Porter Foundation and in collaboration with Design Museum Holon.

Launched: November 2011 as a part of the Decode exhibition.

Who do we appreciate?

Good Listeners is inspired by previous work in the browser plugin field and especially by Jamie Wilkinson's Google Alarm, Jon Pierce's Ghostery and Brian Kennish & Casey Oppenheim's Disconnect Me. It is also inspired by the research and advocacy work done by the likes of Jonathan Mayer, Helen Nissenbaum and danah boyd.

For further reading we recommend "What They Know" a series of reports and research on the topic by The Wall Street Journal. And Helen Nissenbaum's "What's wrong with Behavioral Advertising" presentation at Dartmouth.

Good Listeners benefits from CrossRider, a cross-browser plugin platform that have been especially helpful in serving GL's special needs.