Like buttons, your opinion on them?

[Daniele63]

On my own forum we had discussions about having a like button or not, I'm wondering what is y'alls opinions on the likes and dislikes features in general on social media and forums, what effect it has on people, do you think it's a good or a bad thing?

[ffaf]

For sure I do not fancy the dislike button.  If you have a reasoned opinion, voice it.

I feel like/hearts button are good in "discussion" threads, where "seconded"/"+1" would only clutter the exchange.

On "showcase" threads, I definitely prefer not having it, as actual feedback, even one-liner, is much better than any amount of starts/likes/hearts.

[Melooon]

We have a few related discussions:

• MelonLand Feature request: reactions
• Did reactions damage the internet?

We also tried using a karma system for a while, although it never really worked very well. My own personal view still stands that privately liking something can be a positive feature (and something I've intended to work on here for a LONG time), but having a public likes-tally visible to everyone is inherently toxic.

Its one of those cases where everything should be public, but public things should be high-effort - likes are low-effort and that's fine for a private interaction (often even desirable), but public interactions should be more than that, they should mean something to everyone and be of value to everyone in some way if possible 

[Daniele63]

We have a few related discussions:

Oh, I didn't know this has been discussed already, I'm reading these threads now and quite enjoying it.

My personal thoughts on this is that the presence of the feature creates expectations:

Nobody likes my post - My post is worthless/people do not like it
I have to like a post - Not doing so would mean I don't approve of it

these expectations affect our dopamine/sense of reward, for some people (not all) it will influence the way they express themselves, or it will encourage them to not put their thoughts into words, as pushing the button is the easy way out instead of actually engaging.

I think the bigger problems, such as being ratio'ed, mostly happen on larger communities, but they can also happen on smaller ones, even without the presence of a dislike button.

On social media powered by algorithms, it's a whole different issue. It's why I absolutely hate modern social media, people only cares about how many people liked their posts, and if it gets 0 they think it's worthless.

[candycanearter07]

I get the argument against it, but sometimes I just want to show support for something I like without writing out a long post. As it turns out, people really really end up hating you if you don't like write something long and meaningful every single time and having something safe to use is comforting.

[mortaki]

but public things should be high-effort - likes are low-effort and that's fine for a private interaction (often even desirable)

I agree with this! One of my favorite things about tumblr is that there isn't a visible follower count. You can see your own follows but not anyone else's. This means the culture of the platform doesn't consider follower amount all that important when interacting with people. And I love that! It's part of the reason I stuck with tumblr at all when I don't really use social media. (tbf I don't use my tumblr much either....)

Generally speaking, I feel that interacting on the internet should be more than "I notice you" which is what likes reek of. I, personally, want to know what you liked about this thing I said or this story I wrote. A like means nothing to me by itself. I would rather have two people email me saying they liked something of mine and why than have a thousand people press a button that only tells me they saw it.

Likes aren't for people. They're for algorithms. A way for robots to translate human attention into quantifiable data. A means of ranking the "best posts" without any need to actually interact and evaluate said posts. That alone is enough for me to dislike them on prinicple. Because who exactly is a system like that built for? Certainly not for me or anyone like me.