About a month ago, rumours began popping up, suggesting Facebook could be testing out a new feature that hides the number of “Likes” a post gets. It appears the rumours were true, and the social network is currently testing the feature in, of all countries, Australia.
The social media platform told CNET that it began testing last month on 27 September. It also said that it was running limited tests to gather feedback on where “like, reaction and video view counts are made private across Facebook”.
For Facebook users in Australia, this means that while your followers can still leave a like or emoji on your posts, they just won’t be able to see the number of times others have done the same. On that note, instead of seeing a number of Likes, other users will only see the word “Others” listed. Additionally, the feature seems to apply to Facebook ads as well.
This isn’t the first time Facebook has tried experimenting with hiding the like button. Prior to this, the social media giant ran a similar trial on Instagram, where it tried hiding the Like. As it stands, the like counts on Instagram are hidden in seven countries, including Australia and Japan.
At the time of writing, it’s still not known if and when Facebook will implement the feature outside of Australia.
