
Facebook is testing hiding like counts to see if that makes people feel better - AlphaWeaver
https://www.theverge.com/2019/9/26/20885990/facebook-hide-public-like-count-test-user-experience-australia
======
nradov
Also discussed here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21085323](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21085323)

------
agurk
Those of us who've been here long enough will remember HN used to show the
points for each comment next to the author's name. It would be interesting to
know if anyone had collected any metrics relating to this and how it affected
the experience.

Personally I remember just after the change was first made I kept
automatically looking for the score, as I had been using it for some hueristic
for how much I should value the contents of the comment. Removing it made me a
lot more critical and also open to potentially less popular ideas.

I do know that greyed out comments still make me automatically think less of
them, and I try and make a point of upvoting comments that are downvoted
because people disagree with them (rather than troll/spam/bad faith comments).

~~~
scarface74
Well, to see how it use to look....

[http://tenyearsago.io/news.ycombinator.com](http://tenyearsago.io/news.ycombinator.com)

Wow and as luck would have it. The top story on HN 10 years ago (well actually
it’s not updated daily).

“Experiment: No comment score”

[http://tenyearsago.io/news.ycombinator.com](http://tenyearsago.io/news.ycombinator.com)

~~~
dang
Close enough! 2009-09-26:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=844979](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=844979)

------
JohnJamesRambo
So they admit their product makes people feel bad. Think about that.

~~~
darkwizard42
Huge jump here...

They had a feature that they (as most would) thought would help people engage
with each other and express support. Turns out it has unintended consequences.
Now rightfully so they are exploring how to get away from that.

Not everything is a nefarious scheme. Sometimes it’s just good old product
iteration.

~~~
nafizh
Facebook has exhausted all of the goodwill it could have been given at this
point.

~~~
scarface74
Only in geek culture -- Facebook still has billions of users,

------
winternett
They should improve their UI, provide a real chronological timeline, stop
harvesting user data, create a better way to organize and access historical
photos, stop spamming people with phony notices, end deceptive ads and all
sun-glass sales, and let ALL friends of users see ALL of their friend's posts
again if they really wanted to make people "feel better". ಠ_ಠ

~~~
spookthesunset
The big problem with a chronological timeline is that it doesn’t scale very
well. It can quickly overwhelm you with mostly stuff you aren’t interested in.

I dunno what the solution to this is. How it works now also annoys me because
it often hides things/people I would be very interested in. But at the same
time I don’t have time to look at _everything_.

It is a tough problem and no matter what you do there are positives and
negatives. No silver bullet.

~~~
winternett
With a chronological time line you'd still have the ability to unfollow and
follow users, which would eventually get you to a manageable chronological
list...

Facebook removed chronological order to posts so they can manipulate what is
presented to users any time they want.

~~~
VRay
you can manually tell it to view recent posts first and get what you're
looking for

Of course, when you do that, you get overwhelmed with thousands of obnoxious
reposted political memes, and if you unfollow the people posting them you miss
out on important life events

Facebook lets you make lists of friends and view posts from that list
chronologically too, but it only gives a couple days' worth of posts from the
lists, so that ends up being pretty useless too

EDIT: I should note that it'll automatically go back to its own evil sorting
algorithm pretty often, so you have to keep clicking on "Recent First" again
and again

------
lando2319
Ton of people on here dogging on Facebook, "SEE FACEBOOK ADMITS IT'S PRODUCT
IS BAD".

What do you call it when a company recognizes an area for improvement and
strives to improve it?

Where I come from that's just good business.

~~~
fsociety
Yeah people don't want to see Facebook improve and become beneficial. They
want to see it burn and die.

It's worse now that tech is more about dogmatism as it becomes more popular.

The reality is they have a lot to improve, and they want to improve to keep
the business running.

It's good that people are critical of FB and other companies, but many cross
the line into a purely emotional state.

Even the rhetoric of Facebook breaking democracy is just a rhetoric. It's a
problem with the whole industry.

There are many more Cambridge Analytica companies that don't require data from
Facebook to know everything about you. It's good though that CA was a huge
news story. I'm hopeful that in the next decade we can figure out these things
because it is a huge problem.

------
app4soft
Welcome to old-school era, where "forums" was social network platforms without
`Like` buttons!

~~~
jackvalentine
Forums now have like buttons... and it has utterly corrupted the values of at
least one of them I’ve been on for decades sadly!

~~~
np_tedious
Great point. I upvoted it

~~~
clucas
I couldn't tell...

------
tracker1
I think I must be part of the "test" bunch... noticed last night I couldn't
access the full menu for like option emojis, only click the like button itself
on a group post. The counts also seem to be missing as well.

------
amelius
They should add a "meh" button.

------
vsyu
Seems ironic but would be curious to know the actual outcomes of the test. I
guess we all agree to participate in their testing when you agree to the terms
and sign up for an account.

------
sarcasmatwork
All social media is bad imho. For example, people on Instagram only show the
good, never the bad. So its a fake reality that people look up to, when in
fact its far from the truth. The like button is part of the problem.

~~~
askafriend
Hacker News is social media too.

Tough for people to look in the mirror.

~~~
sarcasmatwork
imho, its not.., myspace, facebook, instagram are.. This is a news aggregator.
I dont use any other part of YT, just the news section.

~~~
askafriend
It's social media. It's not a news aggregator.

People post things they want to talk about. It just happens to be largely
links (but not always; for example AskHN).

Let's do a quick test. Do you consider Reddit to be social media? How about
Twitter? If you do, then so is Hacker News.

Just because you it happens to be a social media site that you personally like
doesn't mean it gets to be in a different category that you consider more
holy. Or just because there's no photos or because there's fewer features,
doesn't mean it's not social media.

------
SketchySeaBeast
"According to her findings, people will still be able to tap to see the full
list of people who liked and reacted to a post (and presumably you manually
could count from there), but the like count will no longer be shown on the
News Feed."

Oh great, so now people have to do just one more step to get the same dopamine
rush. I can't see this solving the problem.

~~~
mieseratte
> Oh great, so now people have to do just one more step to get the same
> dopamine rush.

Friction is useful. Sure, this doesn't solve for some hypothetical influencer
types or advertisers getting count data. For the hypothetical teenager who is
apparently being made mentally unwell by social media, this probably precludes
their putting forth the effort.

Then again I think back to all of those "See Who Viewed Your Page" malware ads
from back in my day, and wonder if this isn't one viral app away from being
useless.

Who the fuck knows? At least it's an attempt. They can go back to the drawing
board if this fails.

~~~
SketchySeaBeast
It adds friction, but for those who jones for that rush, I don't think it'll
be anything but a speed-bump. But it may keep future users from getting
hooked. Maybe.

------
diveanon
They should just hide the entire domain.

Facebook acknowledges their product is toxic, and is taking steps to make it
less so.

If you work for Facebook, how does it feel building a product that is actively
hurting people and the societies they live in?

Have you experienced a crisis of faith, or has your insulated world prevented
you from actual introspection into what you are a part of?

