Facebook tries hiding like counts to see if it makes its user feel better:

If you see someone post on Facebook having a lot of likes, you may feel jealous. If your post doesn’t get a lot of likes, you feel embarrassed. It may fear you that you won’t look popular without these likes. That’s why

Facebook is testing hiding like counts, starting in Australia on September 27th. Facebook will hide the number of likes on a post and will only display that a post was likes by “John and others” instead of “John and 54 others”. This test is a gauge of weather this feature can improve user’s sense of well-being. If this test is successful, it may be rolled out to other countries.

A Facebook spokesperson told techCrunch that they are making like, reaction and video view counts private across the Facebook. This is a limited test and they will gather feedback to understand weather this change will improve people’s experiences.

Earlier in September 2019 Facebook confirms that they were considering hiding like counts after Jane Manchun Wong (mobile app researcher) discovered the hidden feature buried in the companies app. According to Manchun Wong, people will still be able to see full list of people who liked and reacted to a post by tapping on it but the like counts will no longer be shown on the newsfeed. Hiding of likes counts will make users get rid of seeing the exact number of likes at a glance and it could go long way toward curbing feelings of anxiety and depression linked with social media use.

The point of this test is to make people comfortable expressing themselves. Facebook wants users to focus on the quality of content they are posting and how it connects them with people they really care about. One concern is that those pages that have large number of likes and followers often get more likes then individual users’ posts could miss out on extra engagement and reach without that herd mentality. As Instagram had did this test earlier this year and have expended this test to several countries yet Facebook say that they need to do this test by their own app as both are different apps. Though some Canadian influencers have complained that hiding likes test on Instagram has reduced their reach, but there’s been no conclusive data to prove that and Facebook will still use the number of likes in their ranking algorithm.



