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Re:Facebook tries hiding Like counts to fight envy by jazzyjackson on Friday September 27, 2019 @12:16AM (#21088356)
Just because you protect your own identity doesn’t save you from reflecting poorly on your employer - O.P. only said they suspected it was the case, no need to call them full of shit

Besides, even if it was proposed with good intentions there could have been other, aligned agendas that helped it make it into the product

Reddit has been fuzzing scores for years to trip up bots, it’s a good strategy, prevents your enemy from having accurate information. [1]

Also demetricating was conceived 7 years ago (!) by Ben Grosser [2]

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/eaqnf/pardon_me_but_50... [2] https://bengrosser.com/projects/facebook-demetricator/

[edit Thanks for the edit]

Re:Facebook tries hiding Like counts to fight envy by majewsky on Friday September 27, 2019 @03:49AM (#21089492)
Re demetricating: I've only been on HN for a few years, so I don't know much about its UI's history. But since it's also partially demetricated (not showing votes on comments except for your own posts), could it be considered an earlier example of demetrication?
Re:Facebook tries hiding Like counts to fight envy by mrfredward on Friday September 27, 2019 @09:35AM (#21091761)
I'd agree HN is an example of demetrification. I would add a caveat though: HN's opaque rules about rankings, flagging, when to silently ignore votes, etc would drive me crazy if I didn't trust that the people running it genuinely want a good community for hackers. Give Facebook the same power, and I'd assume such powers would be used for nefarious purposes, and I'd find myself (rightly or wrongly) calling half the posts in my feed part of some sort of conspiracy.