After first having spotted Instagram’s code removing the likes from posts, Tech investigator Jane Manchun Wong has again unveiled findings that Facebook is now exploring the idea of removing like count numbers from Facebook timeline posts.
Having already been testing this on Instagram in a select number of countries. More testing and on its other platforms would suggest that there is meaningful data that removing the publicly displayed number of likes is not of negative impact to the rate in which people engage with content.
Social media has been proven to cause an issue for some who obsess over the numbers and even inflate them with bots in order to appear more popular. Given Facebooks declining users hiding likes may also encourage people to keep sharing without fear of having smaller amounts of likes.
The updates are not currently being shown, Jane Manchun Wong who spotted the code changes often inspects the code updates and reverse enginers websites and apps to unveil new features.
