How many likes did I get?

It is widely known that the advent of social media brought along with it a handful of issues our society continues to grapple with. From instant gratification attributed to the apps’ addictive nature to mental health issues surrounding one’s follower count, social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram inserted themselves in our daily lives, creating problems we never thought would come with such an innovative creation. Though these platforms give us ways to communicate our ancestors never thought would be possible, social media companies need to begin to focus their efforts on the well-being of their users, not just growth of the platform for growth’s sake.

Facebook is leading the charge. On September 27th in Australia, Facebook launched an initiative to hide the amount of “likes” someone gets on their post. Commenting on the recent endeavor, TechCrunch Editor Josh Constine says, “Facebook’s goal here is to make people comfortable expressing themselves. It wants users to focus on the quality of what they share and how it connects them with people they care about, not just the number of people who hit the thumbs-up.” While this may be true, I’m not sure how effective it will be in changing user behaviors. Since the like button still exists, the instant gratification of getting a “like” is still triggered. Similarly, the user who posts the photo is still aware of how many people liked the photo; this information is just not publicly shared. The envy Constine touches upon in his older article[s] would remain, as “posters” will still post things to impress “viewers” and viewers will still, by nature, envy the poster. I believe this is due, in part, to the habitual behaviors we have generated as a result of using social media so often. Taking away the like counts demonstrates Facebook’s focus on the overall user experience of their platform, but it seems like a band-aid fix until the company can find a better way to curb the envious emotions users sometimes feel when online.

Don’t get me wrong; Facebook is taking a step in the right direction with the deletion of like counts, but, as Constine points out, there is concern surrounding the effect of this initiative on Facebook pages with large followings. Since many businesses and other organizations build Facebook pages to reach and advertise to their target demographics, like counts give pages the social proof they need to prove their legitimacy. It’s also one of the ways Facebook Ads Manager measures engagement for a company’s post, in turn playing a role in the cost of advertising the company incurs. For businesses, by taking away like counts, we take away the social proof associated with a good product. While I believe this move is a smart one to combat pains of individual Facebook users, I’ll be interested to see how this endeavor affects large organizations and companies advertising on Facebook moving forward.