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Facebook Is Considering A Test That Would Hide ‘Like’ Counts In Your News Feed

This article is more than 4 years old.

Facebook may soon start hiding the number of likes and reactions on posts featured in user’s News Feeds, according to app researcher Jane Manchun Wong, who found prototype code in Facebook's Android app.

“I observed that Facebook has recently begun prototyping this hidden like/reaction count feature in their Android app by reverse-engineering the app and playing with the code underneath,” Jane Manchun Wong wrote in a blog post.

Facebook told Forbes that it has indeed been considering a test that would hide like and reaction counts, but says the test has not started running yet.

The social media giant is already hiding likes for some users on its other services. Instagram began hiding like counts for select users last year, and the company started rolling out the test to more countries after seeing positive results in the initial tests.

“We want your followers to focus on what you share, not how many likes your posts get,” Instagram says in a notification it serves to anyone who is part of the experiment. “During this test, only the person who shares a post will see the total number of likes it gets.”

The social network has built its entire service around likes for more than a decade, but in recent years received criticism for negatively impacting user’s self-esteem and sense of purpose through these interactions.

"It’s a social validation feedback loop," co-founder Sean Parker said in a scathing critique in 2017. "It’s exactly the kind of thing that a hacker like myself would come up with because you’re exploiting vulnerability in human psychology."

Mark Zuckerberg has generally avoided commenting on the impact Facebook on user's mental health. In a 2018 New Yorker story, he said, “We’re not—pick your noncontroversial business—selling dog food, although I think that people who do that probably say there is controversy in that, too, but this is an inherently cultural thing. It’s at the intersection of technology and psychology, and it’s very personal.”

In a blog post from the same year, Zuckerberg said that the new focus of Facebook was to make sure "time we all spend on Facebook is time well spent."

"We built Facebook to help people stay connected and bring us closer together with the people that matter to us," he wrote. "That's why we've always put friends and family at the core of the experience. Research shows that strengthening our relationships improves our well-being and happiness."

If like counts are ultimately removed from Facebook, it would mark a major shift in the way the social network presents and ranks information to users. Facebook likes have long been the currency of social media and an important data point that Facebook uses for targeted advertising, its main source of revenue. Its willingness to experiment with hiding likes and reactions suggests that Facebook is seeking to boost engagement numbers in new ways as user habits change.

In its second quarter earnings call, Facebook said that its daily active user (DAU) trend paints the best picture how people are using Facebook. The company reported 1.59 billion daily active users in Q2, an increase of 8% year-over-year.

Independent research shows some weakness, however. A Pew Research study from May 2018 found that about half of America's teens (51%) use Facebook and that it no longer dominates the teen demographic as it once did. According to the study, American teenagers are more likely to use YouTube (85%) or Instagram (72%).

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