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Facebook Says it May Remove Like Counts (techcrunch.com) 80

Posted by msmash from the shape-of-things-to-come dept.
Facebook could soon start hiding the Like counter on News Feed posts to protect users from envy and dissuade them from self-censorship. From a report: Instagram is already testing this in 7 countries including Canada and Brazil, showing a post's audience just a few names of mutual friends who've Liked it instead of the total number. The idea is to prevent users from destructively comparing themselves to others and potentially fleeing if their posts don't get as many Likes. It could also stop users from deleting posts they think aren't getting enough Likes or not sharing in the first place. Reverse engineering master Jane Manchun Wong spotted Facebook prototyping the hidden Like counts in its Android app. When we asked Facebook, the company confirmed to TechCrunch that it's considering testing removal of Like counts. However it's not live for users yet.
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Facebook Says it May Remove Like Counts More

Facebook Says it May Remove Like Counts

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  • What a blow to meritocracy!

  • Good idea (Score:5, Insightful)

    by 110010001000 ( 697113 ) on Monday September 02, 2019 @10:49AM (#59148920) Homepage Journal

    Fits in with the concept that every idea and thought is equally valid and worth consideration, no matter how idiotic the idea or thought is. No one needs their feelings hurt while we are trying to show them advertising. Welcome to 2019.

    • If only voting was used that way. e.g. Reddit. It's why Slashdot has metamoderation because not every vote is a good vote even if the person doing the voting think they're doing God's work in keeping the idiocy down.

    • They should go through an intermediate step of putting the like counts in hexadecimal. I can't think of a more effective way to get billions of people interested in learning some interesting math like a Base system.

      • They should go through an intermediate step of putting the like counts in hexadecimal.

        Oh, no! My post just got an "F"! I'm going to delete it.

    • Of course the advertising, business and political candidate pages will still get their like counts. That way they know who the advertising is doing. It is only people who will not be able to see it anymore.

    • Posting stupidly populist stuff like both TDS posts, or MAGA posts will garner loads of likes. So people don't bother posting intelligent, thoughtful commentary, they post shit to make themselves feel better that they're receiving accolades (in the form of likes) from their peers.

      Its pathetic, so I think FB are doing the right thing here.

      However, one of the reasons people go on FB in the first place is solely to post such crap and get all the feel-good likes, once they stop, people will stop posting on FB,

      • People like what confirms their own bias, they don't like things that challenge their assumptions no matter how factually correct they may be.

        Blame generations of colonialism, jingoism, yellow journalism, nationalism, and hegemony propaganda. Any an education system designed to support the established power. And a society that categorizes everything as a two sided argument, you're either with us or against us.

    • You REALLY think that Facebook gives a flying fuck about value of ideas? Seriously?
      Or hurt feelings? They condone TERRORIST KILLING PEOPLE - as long as it makes them money.

      They've proven time [buzzfeednews.com] and time again [creativefuture.org] that as long as they make them money ALL IDEAS are fine.
      Even should "it costs a life by exposing someone to bullies" or "someone dies in a terrorist attack coordinated on our tools"... as long as they still "connect people" - it's all fine.
      Ethnic, racial, nationalist hatred... Outright lynchings... taki

      • I read this rant and all I found myself thinking is just how much every single one of these points also applies to every news outlet in existence and that ever existed.

        But somehow journalists are "protected" and social media gets all the abuse.

        • Somehow????? A lack of education will truly be the destruction of the nation. Facebook is a corporate entity that somehow is riding the legal line between publisher and platform because they have enough money to grease the palms of the corrupt, and because they are an infinite data funnel for government entities. News outlets, while they have also been corrupted, exist for a reason and have special privileges for a reason. Facebook is not your friend, they are a giant business making money off of you

          • Why is Facebook "not my friend" but Fox News (which is also a "giant business making money off of you while you get nothing") apparently is under your logic?

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Baleet ( 4705757 )

      ...protect users’ from envy and dissuade them from self-censorship.

      Ha ha. People (Americans, that is) have finally become infantilized enough they need to be protected from their own feelings. Jesus in a green hat, how much dumber can people get?

      As far as that bit about "self-censorship", anyone who needs a job to survive had better censor themselves. The only ones I see really letting it all hang out on FB are those who don't have a lucrative career or business to protect.

      • Women need the validation. It helps them define their pecking order.

      • Jesus in a green hat, how much dumber can people get?

        Is that a reference to Robin Hood? ;)
        And yes, people are actually getting that emotionally fragile.. but I'm not sure that it's only the US..

  • This looks like a good idea to me (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Ambassador Kosh ( 18352 ) on Monday September 02, 2019 @10:54AM (#59148948)

    The research I have read is pretty solid on the like counts being one of the things that makes social media so addictive and negative. Getting rid of those counts would eliminate the incentives that drives people to make posts designed to get as many likes as possible and comparing their likes to others likes.
    The same thing should be done for video views on youtube (except in the authors interface) and other places that gives counts like the number of retweets.

    • You're right, but the toxic negative sells ads - at one point FB had a team of psychologists on staff working to make the experience more addictive. I hope they find a soul and stop abusing their users on purpose.

      The deleting posts thing surprised me, but I'm the disagreeable sort who says what he wants (at a high enough confidence level). I really do want people saying unpopular, and even wrong things - we can't ever grow if people are self-censoring.

      • Zynga was hiring psychologists to help improve the addictiveness of their shitty farm game before FB. Zuckerberg is evil but also never had an original thought in his life. Fortunately zynga is a forgotten zombie company now. We can only hope FB soon follows. Will not be missed.

      • I do not want idiots saying stupid things that is how the antivaxxers spread. It is why fake news is so prevalent.

        It is idiots telling lies and people not believing them because they get tons of likes.

        While I believe everyone should be allowed to talk and share not every one shares useful or insightful information.

        Cutting out the BS and lies is the hardest thing to do and what most of us get wrong.

      • Self-censoring, others do the censoring, at least the former gives one some semblance of control.

      • I'm a photographer. I measured the value of each photo by the number of Likes and reactions and comments. If a photo survived two (2) days with no reaction at all, I deleted it and posted it somewhere else hoping it would be well-received.

        I'm retired and don't lose $100,000 a day for each photo, so it's no big deal, but I was in it for the positive feedback.

        --

        I ditched Facebook many months ago. I got a script that deleted each and every post, Like, Share, Comment, photo, video, etc. Then I Deleted the accou

        • I'm a photographer. I measured the value of each photo by the number of Likes and reactions and comments.

          So your photo stream is just a bunch of photos of cats inside various objects?

      • Find a whatnow?

        You're talking about a corporation, you know that, right? Corporations are by definition intelligence without conscience.

      • The toxic side sells ads but the toxic side is also so toxic that it is in danger of getting the facebook regulated along with the rest of the industry. They need to back off on the toxic side a bit or their company is likely to be so heavily regulated do to the damage they cause that they might not exist anymore or just as a shadow of what they are now.

        Sometimes you need to know when to dial things back to the maximum you can get away with and not have people with pitchforks howling for your blood.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by MpVpRb ( 1423381 )

      Disagree
      I use FB as a free national ad campaign for my inventions
      Like counts are a useful metric

    • The research I have read is pretty solid on the like counts being one of the things that makes social media so addictive and negative. Getting rid of those counts would eliminate the incentives that drives people to make posts designed to get as many likes as possible and comparing their likes to others likes. The same thing should be done for video views on youtube (except in the authors interface) and other places that gives counts like the number of retweets.

      ... Score:5, Interesting

  • Gamification (Score:5, Insightful)

    by onyxruby ( 118189 ) <onyxrubyNO@SPAMcomcast.net> on Monday September 02, 2019 @10:59AM (#59148970)

    If you create a thing that can be manipulated in such a way that it can be turned into a score people will gamify it. It doesn't matter what the something is and it doesn't matter if it was intended to be competitive. People will gamify things because they can. Whether it's karma on slashdot, likes on facebook or tweets on twitter is irrelevant.

    People will do so as long as they can for the simple reason that they can. It's human nature to be competitive and try to beat the other person. Since you can't change human nature, the only thing you can do is change the game. Simply put, the only way to stop gamification is to stop providing a mechanism by which people can keep score.

    • Very insightful. Please mod up.

      • Thanks

      • Contribute to the game. ;-) Now I will say one thing useful about scoring in that it gives one feedback on how well one's message is received. Not as good as commenting, but better than nothing at all.

    • So, it should be turned into a lottery - clicking the Like button will add a random number between -10 and 10 to the Like count...

    • Re:Gamification (Score:5, Insightful)

      by burningcpu ( 1234256 ) on Monday September 02, 2019 @11:34AM (#59149098)
      I think Commander Taco's/ Slashdot moderation system was an idea well ahead of the time.

      I didn't understand the utility of having a moderation range limited to only a few 'points,' and where moderation points themselves are awarded based upon 'good stewardship' of posted content, or the creation of. The beauty is that the portion of the community that's demonstrated level-headedness is given power to shape the site, while actors that overtly sabotage content are effectively muted.

      Then there are the subtle refinements such as meta moderation, anonymous postings with a 0 score, the Firehose / user submission, and a limited front-page, such that commentary is current.

      But I think one of the larger strokes of genius was the limitation of possible user score range, and the employ of modifiers such as Funny, Insightful, or Informative. The limited range reduces the number of pissing matches where mod scores are used as defacto survey scores. Anyway, my hat off to Taco and the others that worked to develop the moderation system.

      • Re:Gamification (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Ostracus ( 1354233 ) on Monday September 02, 2019 @11:44AM (#59149130) Journal

        That's from lesson's learned. Slashdot's system didn't start fully formed but plenty of failures getting there. Moderation is just one of those things that's hard, because of it's divisive nature.* But it can't be left out otherwise much like Popular Science comments would need to be disabled.

        *Newsgroups showed what happens without moderation.

      • Slashdot's moderation system is the reason I keep reading, kudos for all of the work done to it an ever evolving modifications of rules as new issues arise.

        The other place that I think has a great moderation system is DPReview. There the users don't mod anything, instead they have people who have contributed to the forums for a long time act as moderators (a few at a time). That way there is a human element that can judge when people are being problems to the forum as a whole and apply some hard rules, but

        • I agree, Slashdot's moderation system is pretty good. Haven't seen DPReview. I looked at Slashdot, Reddit, and Twitter (and some background papers) to get ideas for my paper on making a less evil Reputation System http://web.ncf.ca/au829/Weeken... [web.ncf.ca] Yup, after seeing too many Black Mirror and Orville episodes, I thought I could make a better system. Still evil, but not as much.

          Reducing the points you can award (like Slashdot, so you have to think) and some sort of trust or meta-rating of people's rating a

        • The problem with "a select few users as moderators" is that that very quickly can descend into partisanship, because those moderators are also opinionated about the topics being discussed.

          Its rampant over on many Stack Exchanges - I've seen people get pushed out because they were about to beat a moderator in karma points (literally, someone was temporarily suspended with no good reason until their points dropped enough behind a moderators), questions get shut down because moderators don't like their topics

          • "There is no good moderation system, and the alternative of no moderation is just as bad. Its almost as if we are broken as a society..."

            Paid moderators. Free gives like results.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by trawg ( 308495 )

        Agree completely and I'd add it's entirely because of the moderation that I return to Slashdot every day and have done for many many years now.

    • That's true and games have a scoring system.

      The Likes, reactions, Shares, and comment count can be positive feedback that feeds Member revenue or ego.

      There are cases of suicides based on negative responses on social platforms.

      My guess is that Facebook will not decide to implement. Facebook is boring enough and a time suck as it is.

      With no scoring system, while the hell even play?

    • 5, Insightful. Looks like you won this round.

  • FB: I want you to like me
    FB: But I'm not going to tell you how much I'm liked
    FB: In case you get jealous and leave me

    For some reason this this does not seem like it is being done for the benefit of the FB users. /s

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Tinder is a more direct measure of how many find your picture appealing. FB is for grandmother's sharing stitching patterns and baby pictures.

      • lolz and tinder is for pathetic cunts who want to get laid but can't with girls they meet in the real world

        • Maybe so but it's still a better metric than FB Likes. People get laid off tinder at a much higher rate than off fb likes.

          • the people on FB are the ones who have sucessful relationship, get laid on regular basis and have normal life. Tinder is for wannabees.

            • FB is where people go to find out their friends really weren't when they post something their friend disagrees with. I've never been on tinder but successfully used other dating apps/sites. I assume tinder is the same as those. Also, FB is evil. Tinder is just another dating app.
  • ... except for Facebook's random, shady and sometimes inconsistent long term account suspensions - those can lead to self-censorship more than whether or not your friends liking/disliking your timeline posts.

  • Don't do it (Score:3)

    by techdolphin ( 1263510 ) on Monday September 02, 2019 @12:08PM (#59149222)
    I host and produce a podcast on health policy. I want to know the counts so I know what concerns people and if I need to talk about a certain topic. I would like FB to keep the counts or at least provide way for me to access them.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by DogDude ( 805747 )
      Unless you're a customer, why do you think they'd care what you want? If you spend money with them, I'm sure they'll keep the clicks (and all of the other metrics they currently give out to customers).
      • They care about content creators who drive a lot of user to their site. This gives them an audience for the advertisements. The OPs podcast is essentially the value that people get in exchange for turning over their privacy. So yeah, I would say that they should care. Whether they care about ordinary users is a bit different of a story.

  • They'll keep them in place for customers (Score:4)

    by DogDude ( 805747 ) on Monday September 02, 2019 @12:39PM (#59149358)
    I'm sure they'll keep them in place for customers, though. Otherwise, how would you know that you're getting what you paid for?

  • Seriously.

    I don't want to live in the world these bastards are trying to create.

    Wrap everyone up in bubble wrap and tape everyone's mouth shut.

    Fuck that shit.

    • It's pretty much the opposite actually.

      Facebook's current like system created giant echo chambers where no outside perspectives could get in.

      Large mobs screaming at the minority with overwhelming likes for consensus views, burying anything contrary.

      Facebook basically created a poisonous culture through likes and now it looks like they're trying to find a way out of their mess.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Chas ( 5144 )

        Replace "facebook" with "Social Media" and you're probably more correct.

  • This sounds about as stupid as Tumblr removing porn. So any bets on Facebook getting sold off for $5mil in a couple years?

  • The best thing (Score:4, Insightful)

    by merde ( 464783 ) on Monday September 02, 2019 @04:17PM (#59150044)

    The best thing Facebook could do is to remove Facebook.

  • I use like counts of something's popularity as an indicator I should me further question the truthfulness of an item. The most popular shit often turns out to be the most misleading. Removing a semi-objective metric from public view would force you to have to completely capitulate to the black boxness of their popularity/visibility algorithms. It's just a way for them to avoid having to explain why popular items don't surface - if you ain't got the numbers, you have no evidence to complain.

    This is just more

  • Any community that keeps score will fall into these two fates.

    1: Become an echo chamber filled with miles of bullshit. See Reddit.
    2: BUY LIKES FROM WWW.SHITTYSITE.CH being spammed and used. Remember when Twitter did a mass purge of bots last year, and Trump lost 200,000, followers, Obama lost 2,000,000, and Bieber lost 3,000,000?
  • So then we also wouldn't know when a post only gets just a few likes. I very much enjoy seeing someone's stupid anti- posts only get one or two likes. Taking this away from me will make me use Facebook even less than I do now.

  • What's the big deal? I already get 0 Likes (Score:3)

    by ripvlan ( 2609033 ) on Tuesday September 03, 2019 @12:24PM (#59152298)

    I just put crap out there. Even my mom doesn't like my posts.

    Garbage Out. Mostly out. :-P

  • Im taking over before you bitches ruin beauty

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