Heads Up: Facebook Is Going To Start Hiding Likes

Facebook and Instagram are designed to draw us closer; to make us more connected, engaged, and involved. But sometimes, they can do precisely the opposite.

After all, social media envy is a real thing. We share every inch of ourselves onto the internet, and sometimes that act of sharing is met with total, pounding silence. How could we not feel abandoned and neglected, when we measure our worth by the clicking of a like button, particularly when there are people out there who make their entire living wage of prompting people to click a like button?

Well, looks like Facebook, like Instagram before it, is owning up to the problem that social media can create, and is getting rid of likes.

“We want Facebook to be a place where people can connect and share in ways most valuable to them,” says Mia Garlick, Facebook Australia’s director of policy.

“To that end, in Australia we are testing making the total number of likes, reactions and video view counts across Facebook private. We want to understand from people whether removing the total counts improves their experience, while also not limiting any positive interactions.”

The move is an attempt to make Facebook less like a competition, with the emphasis now hopefully shifted onto the quality of posts, not the kind of reception that they get.

It’s also worth noting that at this stage, the like-less new Facebook is getting rolled out very slowly, with Australia the only test country in the world. It’s also not necessarily set in stone that Facebook will forever be this way — it’s possible that it might revert back if the experiment is unsuccessful.

But given that Instagram remains thoroughly like-free since that experimental roll-out, it’d probably be wise to expect that within a year or so, most social media platforms will be hiding likes.

Whether that really does make people feel happier and more connected when they plug into their phones remains to be seen, however.