Facebook might be removing the feature it itself popularized - the "like" counter. It already started some testing back in April on another of the company's apps, Instagram.
While the test findings are yet to be released, new reports claimed that the trials have already gone beyond Canada, where they were started, to six more countries. Instagram added Brazil, Australia, New Zealand, Italy, Ireland, and Japan to the test in July, Techcrunch has reported.
This is an indication that the findings are quite positive, and soon, users will no longer be able to "like" news feed posts.
According to Techcrunch, a tech blogger, Jane Manchun Wong uncovered Facebook's plans to one day remove the like counter. She discovered evidence of Facebook's newest prototype in its Android version. According to her, this unreleased feature seems to work similarly to the one tested on Instagram.
With this alleged new and upcoming version of Facebook, if the prototype becomes the reality that is, users will still see the total of likes their posts will get. However, their friends or other people will not. Instead, what they will see are just the names of the people who liked or reacted to the said posts. They probably can count the number of names if they have the time, but that even sounds implausible, at least for normal human beings.
Wong's discovery is not in vain because Facebook itself confirmed to Gizmodo that it is truly considering testing such a feature. However, the company did not give details as to when this feature will roll out or if it will even be released.
Gizmodo added that it is ironic that Facebook is now considering getting rid of the like count when it was the social media that pioneered this feature in the first place. It has now become common lingo to say "like this post, like that photo!" so there will be a lot of upset individuals when this feature is once and for all scrapped.
On the other hand, some say that this is a move towards the right direction as well, because unintentionally, number of likes has translated into an indicator of someone's popularity and some people feel inadequate and sad when their posts do not get as many likes, even though they know it's not really important in the grand scheme of things.
It can "protect users' from envy and dissuade them from self-censorship," Techcrunch wrote. Some people decide to no longer post or edit/delete their posts for fear that the post will not get likes anyway and just make them look bad.
