Messing with Strathern’s Law
“When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.”
Marilyn Strathern expanded on Charles Goodhart’s comment about monetary policy and turned it into a useful law of the universe.
As soon as we try to manipulate behaviors to alter a measure, it’s no longer useful.
That’s why you can’t believe social media metrics. Because they don’t measure anything except whether someone is good at making them go up.