Your Facebook Likes could soon disappear forever, along with your bragging rights
LIKE it or not, you might be waving goodbye to public Facebook Likes
Facebook could soon hide ‘Like’ numbers on pictures, videos and statuses, meaning your friends, family and followers won’t have any idea how popular your posts are.
The news comes after superstar app-researcher Jane Manchun Wong decided to reverse engineer the Facebook app and discovered a bit of code that suggests Facebook may be making quite a significant change in the near future. She posted the findings on her blog, which make for some interesting reading.
Following on from the discovery, TechCrunch approached Facebook about the hidden code and the social media giant confirmed that it is indeed considering removing Like counts from posts in the future.
It’s no secret that social media use and the desire to be popular online can impact mental health and this change is likely one of the ways Facebook is hoping to tackle the ongoing problem. Wong clearly agrees, saying in her blog: “I am certain hiding the public like counts will be beneficial to the digital wellbeing of a large chunk of users.”
The idea of hiding Likes isn’t brand new, though. Facebook-owned Instagram has been trialling this in a few countries already including Italy, Japan and Ireland – but it’s still been described as a controversial move by some social media users. In countries where this is being trialled, users can only see the names of mutual friends who’ve liked the post, rather than the total figure.
Mia Garlick, director of public policy at Facebook Australia and New Zealand, said about the Instagram trial: “We hope this test will remove the pressure of how many likes a post will receive, so you can focus on sharing the things you love.”
If and when Facebook do roll out the feature, it’ll mean that only the original poster will be able to see the exact number of Likes a post has received. Followers and friends will be able to see that the content has some Likes, but no figure will be shown.
Given that instagram have trialled this feature in only a set number of regions, we’re expecting the same for Facebook if this does go public. However, if it’s well received by users and proves to be popular, there’s no reason why it couldn’t be made into a permanent feature.
