Facebook will hide the amount of Likes in Australia as a test

In Australia, Facebook will hide the amount of Likes a message receives from the outside world. Instead, only the users who posted the message can see it. Facebook wants to use this test to see what the consequences are for mental health.

Australian Facebook policy director Mia Garlick tells The Guardian that research shows that the amount of Likes can cause ‘social comparison’. This would make the platform feel more like a competition rather than focusing on the quality of interactions and content, says Garlick. The director hopes that people will feel more comfortable sharing things on the platform.

With the test, which ‘a large part’ of the Australian Facebook users will have to deal with, the amount of Likes will be hidden. Users will then only see the name of one person who has placed a Like, with the text and others behind it. Users can still see the list of Likes, so the amount of Likes can eventually be counted manually. The exact amount of comments and video viewers is also hidden. This information will still be available to the person who posted the message.

It is not yet known how long the test will take and whether it will also be extended to other countries. Facebook writes that it is currently gathering feedback and will make a decision based on that. That Facebook would like to hide the number of Likes was discovered earlier this month by Jane Wong.

Facebook isn’t the parent company’s first platform to undergo such a move. For example, such an experiment was found in the code of Instagram in April. This experiment has since started in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Ireland, Italy, Japan and New Zealand. Twitter is toying with a similar idea, letting users hide certain replies to Tweets as a test.