#AnxiouslyWaitingForLikes... Been there. You post a pic of you and that friend — or worse — a pic of just you. After 5 minutes you've got 2 likes. After 10, 6. After an hour, 14. DELETE POST. The like-struggle is real. Facebook is aware and just confirmed its test to remove the number of a post's social media affirmations from public view.
Side hustle... Jane Manchun Wong enjoys one as a "reverse engineer" — while you're reading Snacks, she's mining code, searching for deep-app irregularities. We'll let her describe what happened next in her own words:
Facebook confirmed it's testing a way to hide the likes from your followers/friends, but still showing you. Letting go 100% is hard.
This is a classic cost-benefit analysis... It's testing to see how users react first before it makes the thumbs-up invisible. The cons could hit Facebook's bottom line (less user engagement and potentially ad revenue), the pros are mostly for society (less anxiety). But Facebook could win valuable PR points if it makes the right decision — just as it separately faces political tech-lash over its privacy problems and anti-competitive size.