Instagram is currently hiding likes in Ireland as part of a test, only the person who uploads the photo sees how many people like it. It will be interesting to see if they roll it out everywhere or decide against it.

That’s interesting and thanks for pointing that out.

Personally I think the converse would be more effective hide the score from the uploader. People upload to gauge their popularity (via image proxy).

Basically I don’t think the issue is, hmmm, what pic got the most likes, do I can get likes too. It’s let me see how many likes I can get on my pic. Obviously people will copycat to go for reproducibility of likes, but are mostly interested in the likes.

So just kill all the social networks? I love your enthusiasm but I don't think it works that way?

I mean if you kill the comments (ignoring "likes and views"), nobody would post anything on Hackernews. Engagement and community building are how message boards and social networks function...

Sorry, with regard to comments it was more geared to the comment count (metric) as well as the aspect (anodyne one-two word fawning comments that don’t engage beyond that).

IDK that killing comment count, likes, upvotes, or your engagement "metrics" really do anything. If I can post a picture and get 100 people saying "Damn, you look so sexy!" imma post that shit even if I'm unable to know exactly how many people just told me how sexy I am!

If you can create a feedback loop, people will use that loop to use that loop to get positive feedback. Unless you eliminate comments entirely, people will keep doing this. And if you remove the counts from your platform, you're just opening yourself up to have a secondary service provider create those metrics and sell them to influencers instead of being able to monetize them yourself.

Again, there's no advantage for a social network to kill its ability to create a community and content on its own. It goes against the model. You want to make this a bigger discussion about corporate responsibility and whatnot, that's a worthwhile conversation. But saying "keep the social platforms, but kill the social part unmeasurable" is a weird place to take it to.

No, that's not how this works. That's not how any of this works.

Do you think anyone is out there "seeking likes" for the sake of likes? If we hide likes and views, who would we be hiding them from? Third parties, or the person making the content? If the former, then the person making the content is still getting a dopamine rush. If the latter, then the audience will have a button that they're not sure if it does anything when they click it. If both, then someone will still find a way to track these things due to the outcome of the algorithm used to sort content to trending or not.

Oh, wait wait wait, no, let me guess, you want the idea of popular content to be thrown away completely and have the pseudo-communist overlords of silicon valley to select what is or is not trending manually?

Like, what possible solution do you think there is to this other than just leaving the system be as it is and being content with the fact that humans are humans?

I’m not sure what you’re on about. What I’m saying is that people seek approval and or attaboys and attagirls. They want the likes and they want the comments, the recognition. This leads to this behavior.

If they were posting things to a virtual void the great majority would quickly decelerate the rate of this behavior.

The same with Twitter. The amount of garbage that platforms spews daily would go down tremendously if likes and retweets weren't a thing. I can't spend more than a few minutes reading the most cringeworthy crap without questioning why I'm even looking at it.

True, but I think Twitter is a bit different in some aspect. It’s still about recognition, but it’s more akin to oneupmanship with yo momma jokes (and similar things) where people attempt to impress via quips and such and getting the attagirls and attaboys vis this idea signaling.

It isn’t so bad when it’s a group of five or ten being smart or crass and obnoxious within that limited group. The amplification via Twitter makes that unbearable. I agree the metrics do ultimately drive this behavior too.